City Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. It is 5 o'clock, so I'll call the meeting to order.

Yes, good evening and welcome to the City Commission of the City of Brownsville. Pursuant to Chapter 551, Title V of the Texas Government Code, that the Texas Open Meetings Act notice is hereby given that the City Commission of the City of Brownsville, in accordance with Article 5, Section 12 of the Charter of said city, will convene at a regular meeting on August 18, 2026. The time is 5 p.m. Here in the Commission Chambers on the second floor, of the Brownsville City Hall Old Federal Building, located at 1001 East Elizabeth Street, Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas, 78520. We will continue with the roll call. We'll start with Mayor John Cowan Jr. He's attending virtually. He notified present. Then we'll go to Commissioner Tino Villarreal. Present. And then Mayor Pro Tem Narenth Galonski. commissioner brian martinez president commissioner linda macias president commissioner gustavo de leon and commissioner pedro cardenas president we do have a quorum to proceed the meeting we will have the invocation that will be led by by alicia justillion and following we will have the pledge of allegiance led by emma uh aguilar the uh for the girl scouts troop one one one that will be uh leading the pledge of allegiance if you can please stand And if the invocation of the pledge, if y'all can come to the podium.

Good evening.

Please let us pray.

God, our Father, we thank you this day for the opportunity to be here. We praise you for your goodness towards us. Your word says that if we draw near to you, you will draw near to us. You assure us that although we make plans for ourselves, you, Lord, determine our steps. So, Father God, determine our steps right now in this meeting. May our governing authority leaders who are here and remotely inclined to your guidance. Bring to us unity, understanding, and peace for a successful meeting, laboring together for the good of our community. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please join me for the Texas Pledge. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and invisible.

Thank you, Miss Emma. We will now enter into the proclamations. The first one is recognizing the National Aviation Day.

It is an honor to be reading this proclamation on behalf of the city commission. If I can please have all board members, staff who proudly represent our airport. a proclamation of the City Commission of Brownsville, Texas, recognizing National Aviation Day, whereas aviation Whereas aviation has transformed the way people connect, conduct business, and explore the world, serving as a driving force for innovation, economic prosperity, and global connectivity. And whereas National Aviation Day commemorates the pioneering spirit of aviation honoring visionaries such as the Wright brothers and Amelia Earhart. who obtained her commercial pilot's license in Bronzeville, Texas in 1929 before becoming one of history's most celebrated aviators. And whereas the Bronzeville South Padre Island International Airport serves as a vital gateway for Bronzeville and the Rio Grande Valley, supporting commercial air service, business, aviation, tourism, international commerce, and the continued growth of aerospace and aviation related industries. And whereas National Aviation Day provides an opportunity to recognize the dedication and professionalism of pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, ground service personnel, customer service agents, mechanics, flight instructors, engineers, airport tenants, airport administration, maintenance and operations personnel, aircraft rescue and firefighting personnel, and all aviation professionals who commitment ensures that safe, efficient, and reliable movement of people and goods every day. Now, therefore, we, the members of the City Commission of the City of Bronzeville, Texas, by virtue of the authority vested by the Charter of said city, do hereby proclaim August 18, 2026, as National Aviation Day in the City of Bronzeville, Texas, and encourage all residents to recognize and celebrate the essential contributions of aviation to our community, state, and nation. Done on this, the 18th day of August 2026.

One, two and three.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and commissioners wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all your support on behalf of the airport. As previously stated that the airport does not consist of just pilots and aviation enthusiast. It is a network that comes together every day to make sure that our airport is operational, efficient and first and foremost safe. Today we're joined by pilots, FBO members and board members and everyone that comes in to make sure that our airport is compliant and operational on the daily level. Thank you for this opportunity. We look forward to working with you in the near future as we continue to hit every benchmark set by the FAA and all other governing bodies. Thank you very much.

Proclamation number two is recognizing the Brownsville Police Department SWAT competition.

Start reading it. Whereas the Brownsville Police Department Special Weapons and Tactics SWAT Team exemplifies the highest standards of professionalism, discipline, teamwork, commitment in safeguarding the citizens of the city of brownsville and surrounding communities and whereas on july 30th through 31st 2026 the brownsville police department swat competition team competed against elite tactical county state and federal teams from across the rio grande valley during the 2026 rio grande valley swat challenge demonstrating exceptional tactical proficiency physical endurance sound decision making and unwavering dedication under demanding conditions And whereas, through outstanding performance in a series of challenging events designed to evaluate tactical operations, firearms proficiency, physical fitness, leadership, communication, and teamwork, the Brownsville Police Department SWAT Competition Team earned the distinction of being named the 2026 Rio Grande Valley SWAT Challenge Champions. And whereas the Brownsville Police Department SWAT competition team has further distinguished itself as a regional leader by fostering strong interagency partnerships, promoting professional collaboration and strengthening relationships among law enforcement agencies throughout the Rio Grande Valley through joint training exercises, tactical instruction and the open exchange of knowledge and best practices. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the city of Brownsville City Commission that the Brownsville Police Department SWAT competition team is hereby recognized and honored for its achievement as the 2026 Rio Grande Valley SWAT Challenge champions and for its continued dedication, service and excellence in protecting and serving the community. Done on this the 18th day of August 2026.

Congratulations, RGV select committee.

No comments?

OK. Good afternoon.

May I begin?

All right. So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'll keep it short, simple, sweet and to the point. Master Martinez with the Bronx Police Department SWAT team. My other gentlemen are Officer Salvador Rosas, Andy Martinez, Gino Garza, and Arnulfo Soto. We are what make up the competition team. First and foremost, we are very thankful and grateful to God for keeping us safe at every keep it safe at work every day. We're also very grateful for the Chief Felix Salceda and the Bronson Police Department and the City Commission for the equipment, gear, funding, training that is given to the SWAT team and the department, all of which allowed us to practice and train the way we did to be able to accomplish and win this year's RGV SWAT Challenge. Through hard work and effort, training two to three times a week, and working as a team, and sometimes even competing against each other, allowed us to learn from our deficiencies and improve as a team. We would work out at the PD gym, then go to the shooting range, work out some more, doing circuit training, and then strive for accurate shots while feeling fatigued and with a high heart rate. Once we started feeling that we were getting good, we would throw on our plate carriers and our gas masks, and then that's where the fun began. This exposure and knowledge and experience, the physical fitness, the tactics used, the nutrition added up and worked in a compound effect that gave us a slight edge to win the competition. Everything that was learned and gained in this process will be and is being put to good use. Some of you might ask, right, because I've heard from friends, right, like, hey, you guys are just playing games out there. Ask the other teams, did it feel like a game? Like no it's it's very demanding right, I remember the first time that was able to make it to the SWAT team and be part of the competition team when I was at the starting line. All eyes on you right your your family members are watching the other agencies are watching their families are watching. The vendors are watching, like, all right, the bronzo guys are up next. Let's see how they do, right, here in their own city, right? All this pressure and stress, and you haven't even started, right? So you're just waiting for the cue to go. You're either pushing, pulling something heavy, or you're going through the obstacle course all while having a loaded weapon with you, right? So it can add up, right? So this exposure, knowledge, experience, physical fitness, tactics, use, nutrition, right? It's not just for us. Basically, everything that we learned is and will be applied to other trainings within the department. As the saying goes, as steel sharpens steel, so does one man sharpens another. We're all certified instructors. We teach various topics. Sometimes we have dual roles. Firearms instructor, room clearing, alert, less lethal munitions, like the beanbag round with the shotgun, CS gas, taser. We're very thankful for that Taser, that awesome 10-year contract. um so so i guess what i'm saying is right we serve in different levels of experience for the departments that we train the police academy cadets to patrol officers to other swat officers including other agencies from the state of texas we're creating a robust and advanced training environment which is our current ceiling right but that ceiling will be our futures officers foundation this will be the norm and standard to push new officers to another level and so on and so forth for the future and public safety of the city of Brownsville. Thank you for your time.

Yes, thank you again. And, um, I mean, congratulations. Now we will move on to the public comment period. So we did receive 29 registered forms up until the deadline out of the 2926 have opt in to speak in front of you all at this time. It's at the discretion of the City Commission. If you want to suspend the rules to allow all 26 and or the time limit instead of the three minutes to two, it's at your discretion.

I go forward to suspend the rules and let everybody speak. Okay.

So there's a motion. I mean, as for the number of speakers, as for the number of speakers.

26. So there's a motion to suspend the rules to allow all 26.

Correct.

You want to do it at two minutes or three, the regular time?

Oh,

The regular time, the regular time, the regular 3 minutes, do the regular time.

Perfect.

There's this motion in a 2nd.

Oh, there's a 1st, um, there's 1st to suspend the rules and, um, to allow everyone to speak 3 minutes and there's a 2nd, all those in favor aye aye. Any opposed. Motion carries.

Perfect. We will allow all the members to speak the ones that signed up as a courtesy reminder. You know, when you did sign up to speak, you did acknowledge the public comment rules that is displayed on this on the screen as well as a reminder to address the city commission as a whole. You will not allow any time for the moment of silence. As speakers will be allowed to speak up to the three minutes, please state your name and your address. If you do not want to provide your address, please indicate if you're a Brownsville resident or an owner of a commercial business. We will start with Elise Rosas. You're the first speaker. And following, we will have Dr. Laura Cisneros. And Elise Rosas. Do not see Annalise Rosas coming to the podium. Okay. Then Dr. Laura Cisneros next. Do not see Dr. Laura Cisneros. Caleb Foss. Okay. And the time will begin after you state your name and your address. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Caleb Foss. I'm a Brownsville resident. I live here downtown and I am the Y DSA co-chair here in Brownsville. And I came back today to voice my concerns one more time about the AI data center. I do thank those of you that have made public statements against the AI data center. Uh, because I know all of you were just so disgusted by the facts presented last time that you all want to make a public statement now. right here right now each of you to make a statement not only to the citizens of brownsville but every citizen in the world that this ai data center will affect consequences like dominoes i wanna i wanted to be here when all of you came to this realization uh because it's not worth the money that it might bring because of the cancer it will cause in our bones the air and water pollution and the dementia in your wives and husbands as you grow older The forever chemicals and the water crisis this will cause with Mexico is not worth any innovation it may bring to the city. And I was going to look right at the mayor, but he's not here, so please. I'm going to ask you again to vote no, but I would like to add a couple of facts I was reading. You know, in 2030, the global consumption of AI data centers will be about the same amount of terawatts per hour as the entire country of Japan. So all of the data centers in the United States make up the energy usage of a small industrialized nation. Data centers often need to ask utilities to build their own power plants, commonly gas-fired turbines that emit carbon, methane, and other harmful pollutants. For example, in Homer City, Pennsylvania, developers seeked permits to build what they would be the largest methane gas plant in the United States. killing any innovation for green, renewable, clean energy. These facilities would only serve the data centers. Well, in Indiana, they want to build a 2.3 gigawatt power plant, which was a former coal plant, to fuel these data centers. The amount of water and utility cost that these data centers use was provided. I found this information published in January of 2025 from the Frontera Group. About 5 million gallons of water per day, which is roughly the daily use of a town with 50,000 residents. Does Brownsville have the capacity to take 50,000 more residents on in one day? For those of you that have not made any public statement, your ambiguity cannot shield you from the consequences of no action on this matter. You know it's wrong. We, as your constituents, know it's wrong. And I urge all of you within the next couple of days to make a public statement against AI data centers. We all know it's wrong. And I thank you for my time.

Next, we have Yolanda Spies. And following, we will have Hugo Izaguirre on deck.

Yolanda Spies, I am a Brownsville resident. When I was younger, I worked in radio broadcasting for 10 years. I was really good, too. You would think I was indispensable. Indispensable. Hmm. The word means so much to so many people and a lot of people seem to think they are indispensable, especially when they work for this particular city under this particular leadership, no matter how abusive they get with constituents like me and other residents in town. But when those of us had the privilege of working where we worked, that was not true for me or any other person working radio. When I quit, they already had a replacement by the afternoon. My time slot went off without a hitch. No one missed me. The thing is, a lot of people learned early and the hard way that we were all disposable. One day a coworker mouthed off to one of my bosses during an event Saturday evening, but Monday morning he was fired. He was gone. No warning, no notice. And he told us during our weekly meeting that if we ever thought we could be If we ever thought we were irreplaceable, five minutes after we were dismissed, they would be at least a dozen people in line to take our place and for less money. And the truth can be said about this mayor and the city commission. Four of you will be up for reelection next year. We are your boss. We supervise and give the necessary marching orders, so get your boots on. You're going to be knee deep. We told you we don't want something, but you are trying to force it down our throats whether we want it or not. We can't spare resources so you can get your blood money. Brownsville is one of the poorest cities in the country. We can't afford the luxury. Let them find another place to destroy where they have plenty of resources. It's inappropriate. For you to debate, be demanding and expecting that from us, the fact that you are even doing that goes beyond inappropriate and unprofessional. So, do you really think your money to buy the get us will be enough for reelection? Do you really think our money will be able to satiate your child search for water? Because water will practically be in demand. Do you really think your money would be enough to buy us water and not just for us but for our children? We trusted you with our city and our lives. You took an oath. Apparently your words mean nothing. Do you really think you're that indispensable? We'll see in 2027, right? My husband's grandma would say, those who don't listen must feel. I hope you feel it for the rest of your days as long as you live. May your children feel it, especially if you choose to stay in Brownsville. I want you to feel it, and I want Brownsville residents to make you feel it all over, but especially where it hurts, which is your wallet, your children, and your livelihood. Hmm. Your pain is good for me and everybody you choose to betray. We took a note. You took a note. Are you going to keep it?

Next speaker. Hugo is I get a following. Jesse Gonzales. Hugo is I get a and then Jesse Gonzalez will be on deck.

Here? Here? Hi, my name is Hugo Izaguirre. I'm a Brownsville resident. I know this wasn't on today's agenda, but I came here to remind everyone that we did not ask for a data center. I live three minutes away from the previously proposed data center. Since the last I spoke at this podium, Brownsville citizens were told a moratorium was being considered due to public backlash. But since then, data center job listings were made public. Whispers of leaked information about inevitable construction of a data center were made. And regardless of whether it's true or not, I just can't help but feel an absence of urgency regarding data centers. So I would like to remind everyone that we didn't ask for this. We didn't, we don't want our water and electric bills to rise due to potential data center. We don't want our community be polluted with a never ending mechanical buzz and wastewater runoff from a potential data center. I'm here to remind all of us that we didn't ask for any of this. We asked for a moratorium and we need it as soon as possible. One that gives our community the ample time to protect ourselves from the data center scourge that plagues us. I'm thankful that a 90-day moratorium is being considered, but I strongly urge the implementation of the legally mandated 180 days. Our community wants answers and I think it's time we started taking data centers seriously. Thank you.

Jessie Gonzalez and then following will be Annalise Rosas.

Good afternoon, Council and Mayor. My name is Jesse Gonzalez. I am here as a concerned citizen of Brownsville to again talk about the data center moratorium and solutions that we see best for Brownsville. Like I mentioned the last time I was here, 60 days is not enough time to research the quality of life, property tax, electricity and water consumption on an individual and collective level. Instead of creating buffers that keep data centers on city edges, we recommend on ordinance that prohibits all centers from laying base near or around any colonias around the city limits. And in addition to the zoning restriction, we recommend a total banning and electrical use and water usage from pub to any centers, public utility boards. We don't want any data centers contracted with Brownsville to use our Brownsville resources, seeing as we are one of the poorest in the city and we cannot take that type of load down here in the valley. City Council and all commissioners involved with these types of decisions must be transparent with the community and put the community first and foremost. Moving forward, we urge you create a community-led task force with the sole purpose and responsibility of guaranteeing community participation, and we urge you work closely with this task force to make sure that the relationship between community and Council is kept. Brownsville belongs to the people. Their interests and their thoughts and concerns must be put first. I would like to work with you, Council, in making this a reality. You have my phone number and you have my email. I respond best through direct text and email. And if you do not reach me out, we will vote in people who do. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

Annalise Rosas.

Hi, my name is Annalise Rosas. I've lived here pretty much my whole life with a few years off for education. I'm just standing in front of you today to ask for a moratorium on data centers. And I wrote a little something. When I hold my daughter and sit outside, I find myself admiring the things that make Brownsville beautiful. The birds, the trees, and the ocean nearby. And instead of embracing the moment like I used to as a kid, I find myself feeling scared of this all going away. I'm scared that my baby will grow up and see a Brownsville that I don't recognize. Full of concrete, industrialization, noise pollution, air pollution, toxic waste. All the terrible things we know for sure will come with big industry. I'm here representing the moms I know that couldn't be here today to urge you to think about all our babies before you act. Think about yourselves. Do you want to live in an industrial pollution stricken place? Is that what we truly want? No money is worth your air or your water. And I just wanted to add that it wasn't easy for me to be here today to make sure that her lunch time fit, her nap time fit. I have a job, and I know many people are in that same boat. Many parents are in that same boat. They feel the same that I do, and they just can't come, and they feel the same way. So please consider a moratorium. Thank you.

Uh, next speaker, uh, um, is what any, uh, uh, uh, but I know, yes, Medrano. And then following, uh, Gustavo Sanchez jr. Will be on deck.

Hi, my name is Veronique Medrano. I am a bronze fill resident. It has been only two weeks since residents filled these chambers, and as you can see, they have practically filled them again, asking for transparency regarding the special use permit application to build a data center on a 32-acre property located at 7480 Padre Island Highway. Members of this commission have stated publicly and in these chambers that the application, which has since been withdrawn, did not mean the project had been approved. Okay. Public job listings by Unisys, U-N-I-S-Y-S, that's the name, and multiple staffing firms for tech companies are actively currently recruiting for onsite positions at an undisclosed data center located in Bronzeville. If this project has not been finalized or approved, the public deserves to know who is continuing the hiring process for an unapproved, unsanctioned data center within the city. Given this new information, as well as the recent 120-day moratorium enacted by Harlingen, I ask the Commission to adopt a 180-day moratorium or match Harlingen's 120-day on September the 1st and postpone all data center applications until independent studies addressing energy, water, noise, infrastructure, and fiscal impacts have been completed and released to the public. The public deserves answers based on independent, locally relevant research, not studies that the planning and zoning department based on regions like Dallas, who do not carry the same energy, water and infrastructure requirements that we do here in the Rio Grande Valley. These materials should be available far enough in advance for residents to review and should be accessible through the city's website, public libraries and other community information spaces. the currently suggested 90-day moratorium which is about three months is really not enough time to address and create thorough legally enforceable agreements alongside its constituents this commission has the authority and responsibility to slow this process down establish meaningful protections and put bronzeville residents first Please adopt the full 180 day moratorium during your newly scheduled vote on September the 1st and gather all the facts before allowing any data center development to move forward and let these companies be officially on notice that our city will not be making decisions based on a blank check and a verbal promise.

We have Gustavo Sanchez.

Testing.

Hello, my name is Gustavo Sanchez and I am a resident of Brownsville. I am also one of the co-chairs of YDSA Brownsville and a student at UTRGV. I would like to commission a note that we, the people of Brownsville, do not want data centers in our city nor industrialization, which includes SpaceX, LNG, and Serenite Technologies. That is why we're asking for a 90-day moratorium and extension for another 90 days towing 180 days. These data centers provide harmful effects for many. According to the Environmental Health Project, they cause noise pollution that result in health problems even if there are sound barriers in place. This comes from low frequency noise that causes sleep disturbances, higher blood pressure, mental fatigue, tinnitus, and cardiovascular disorders. I would also like for it to be known that the one mile buffer zone that was proposed last meeting is almost nothing to combat this. To add on, data centers increase local utility bills, such as water and electricity. They also taint our water and cause water to come out brown, as seen in Georgia, which was shown by a U.S. Congresswoman, AOC. Data centers also waste water and increase chances of a drought, as we already are in one. Climate change will also continue to worsen from data centers and will cause our planet to heat up even more. That means harder summers than it already is. It's already 107 degrees outside and this industrialization is just another slap in the face to us. And last but not least, the benefit corporations and not us, the people. There's so much more I can't fit into three minutes, but our message is that we are for a moratorium. And if you do not listen to us, we will promise to vote all of you out next year. Thank you. I yield my time.

Next speaker is an aide, Zapata. Following, we will have Desto Huerta on deck.

Hello, my name is Anait Zapata. I'm here to demand a 180-day moratorium for a data center. I was born and raised in Brownsville, and it's currently summer. It has always been my favorite season. My summers were filled with water balloons running through sprinklers and using water hose to stay cool in the trampoline as we run around and break a sweat. My summers look very different now. I enjoy going outside and being in the sun, but the heat is way more intense. And I need to make sure that I'm wearing sun protection, and I need to make sure that my doors are completely shut and windows are completely shut to make sure that the AC stays inside. And honestly, the AC, the electricity that it runs gets expensive each year. I... I urge you to listen to your constituents and trust that we know what's best for our families and our neighbors. We need food, we need water for our food, and we need electricity to keep our hospitals and our schools running. Every single year, like I mentioned, these prices keep increasing, and as I see on the agenda today, it looks like our property taxes will also be increasing. With a data center coming in, With the data center coming in, we, the citizens of Brownsville, your constituents cannot afford to be paying for more industry for AI data centers or any other industry that, you know, takes our electricity, our water, our energy, and frankly, our money. I urge you to pass a 180 day moratorium and include the community in this process. We need to make sure that we're communicating everything that is happening. There is mistrust, as we heard from somebody else, one of your other constituents, that there's already jobs posting and stuff like that. All of these things that are happening behind closed doors create mistrust. So I urge you to build that trust. It is on you. It is in your hands, right? To create that trust and to keep the communication clear, consistent, So, yes, I yield my time.

Next speaker, Justo Huerta.

Afternoon. My name is Desto Huerta, and I'm a Masters of Social Work student at UTRGV. I am a new resident of Brownsville with my partner who was born and raised here. And over the few last years, I've fallen in love with this region, its people and its culture. While this may not be my hometown of Houston, it's the town I've chosen to call home. I am here as a District 3 resident and a member of DSARGV to remind you all that we do not want a data center in our home. We want a commitment to a community-led moratorium that gives Brownsville the time and public process necessary to develop permanent data center regulations. Data centers will not be a good investment for our community. It will threaten us all here. This is just an opportunity for the rich to get richer while everyone else here cannot afford to live. As a past union member in Houston, Texas, I left knowing me and my union siblings won historic raises and wanted the same here for the valley. Coming here, the community is not only suffering with terrible low wages,

but they have to continue to worry about the effects of all the industries you all allowed to move in. Not all jobs are good jobs. When we think about providing jobs with future data centers, you all have to remember the future costs outside of the job site on the working families and our environments. We need jobs that actually benefit our community. From my union siblings across Texas, this looks like good green union jobs and green energy. We need you all to work with the working people and meet their needs instead of ignoring them. We are the poorest city here, but because we like real opportunity that put our people first over their own profit. The people of Brownsville don't want their resources continuously exploited. We are here to remind you to listen to your residents and to commit to a community-led 180-day moratorium. I yield the rest of my time.

Our next speaker, John Coliver, and then we have the Alexis Diaz on deck. And then Alexis Diaz on deck.

Good evening City Commission. My name is John Joe Cavalier, Jr. I am a District 3 resident of Brownsville and co-chair of DSA RGB's Fuera Data Center's campaign. I'm here alongside organizations, community groups, and small businesses who signed our letter asking this commission to pass a robust community-led moratorium on data centers. Last month, Rander Ventures LLC withdrew its special permit application. And while that's welcome news, we understand that the city now intends to develop its own data center regulations. First, We are asking for a moratorium of at least 180 days rather than 90 days. 90 days is not enough time to study the impacts of this industry, develop strong regulations, and allow a meaningful public participation. So the moratorium should be extended and remain in place while a permanent ordinance is developed and considered. Second, this process must be community led. We are asking for a task force that includes working class residents and communities that could be affected by data center development and without any members with ties to data center corporations.

We also need real opportunities for public participation.

That includes hearings, Spanish interpretation, bilingual notices, and the ability to shape the ordinance before it's finalized. Third, the permanent ordinance must protect our water, energy, and neighborhoods. Brownsville is already dealing with drought, an unstable energy grid, and deep economic inequality. Data centers should not be allowed to place additional demands on these resources. And we also need protections against noise pollution and safeguards to ensure that data centers are not simply pushed into nearby colonias that sit outside of city limits. Finally, we need transparency and accountability. The city and public utilities should not use non-disclosure agreements to hide material information from residents. The public deserves advance notice, access to applications and utility demands, and a meaningful opportunity to participate in the discussions and the decisions affecting our water, electricity, and public resources. These demands are more about data centers. They're about who Brownsville is for. The city likes to call itself one city. And while we might all want to believe that we're working towards the same future, we have to be honest. We don't all share the same interests. A corporation trying to maximize its profits doesn't have the same priorities as a family trying to keep the lights on. And a developer looking for cheap land and resources doesn't have the same interests as the working people who depend on them. And so when we say one city, we have to ask, who is that city working for? We believe the resources should serve the public and development should improve the lives of the people who live here and not harm them. So with that being said, I'm asking that this commission passes a robust community led moratorium and gives working people a seat at the table.

Alexis Diaz. Hermelo Hernandez is next.

Good afternoon council.

My name is Emilio.

I am a resident of Cameron County, a student of UTRJV Brownsville, and I serve as the vice chair and membership engagement coordinator of YDSA Brownsville. I am here because our community has concerns, and we believe those concerns need to be heard before decisions are made that could affect the people who already live here. We do not want AI dentist centers, and we are asking for the 180-day moratorium to stop the development one. Our Community is already dealing with rising utility costs and serious concerns about our water supply. Before moving forward with a project of this scale, we need to ask whether it could put even more pressure on the resources that our residents already depend on. We also need transparency, if there are concerns about water quality noise environmental impact or the long term effects of this project residents deserve clear answers and access to the information being used to make these decisions. And we have to ask an important question. What benefits from this development? Economic development is important, but it should not come at the expense of the people who actually live here. We should not allow corporate interests and large amounts of money to outweigh the voices of residents. Elections are next year, and the people of this community will remember whether their concerns were taken seriously. That is why we are asking for the 90 day moratorium on the advancement of this project, with the possibility of extending it 90 days with the possibility of extending it 90 days. 90 days is not enough to properly address these concerns. We want the conversation to happen before decisions are made, not after. Because economic development can wait. Our community's health, water, and future deserve to come first. Thank you. I yield my time.

Kyle Borre. Next speaker, Shayla Gonzalez.

Hello, I'm Shayla.

Hello, I'm Sheila Gonzalez. I was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas. I'm here to demand 180 day minimum moratorium on data centers in order to allocate more time to researching data center impacts, drafting stronger regulations, allowing proactive public participation and creating stricter zoning laws. If it was up to me, data centers wouldn't be allowed in our city. But since we let Starbase and LNGs have the rain, we need more safeguards. If a data center is planning on using our city's precious non-renewable resources, we should be able to set our standards. Water is a non-negotiable. Nor should POV be supplying electricity to data centers that can add to the local electric bill. The city should be taking the environmental impacts of data centers more seriously, as well as the long-term health effects it can cause to the community and our ecosystem. Droughts, noise pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, the de-stabilization of our power grid and the electric waste. All these are valid reasons I need time and extensive planning. Data centers are life altering and it's crucial we are meticulous with every detail, hence why the robust moratorium is being requested. Ask yourself why these companies are considering Brownsville. Our resources, our vulnerable community, and our lax local government are preferred by these companies for their own exploitative gain. We need time to set appropriate regulations to prevent data centers from exploiting us, exploiting our air, our clean water, our power grid, and our people. Because at the end of the day, who's going to be the one to deal with the water scarcity? Us. Who's going to endure the stress of hearing thousands of cooling fans and machinery day and night? Us. Who's going to breathe in the polluted air? Us. Who's going to end up putting the bill? Us. Therefore, the need for a moratorium is crucial for the well-being of all Brownsville and county residents. I implore you to implement a 180-day minimum moratorium for the protection and well-being of our precious city and its people. Thank you.

next speaker father paul hughes good evening council and senora caldino i am father paul hughes presently an oblate priest working in saint eugene's parish on the corner of austin and minnesota road also a member of valley interfaith And this evening, I would like to focus on three particular areas. First of all, data behind the owners and operators of these data centers to ecological and environmental concerns and three effects on the workers data centers. For many, the reality of data centers is something new, intriguing, and mysterious. Yet, what is the actual function and their purpose? As mentioned in a recent Brownsville Herald article, companies such as Soluna Computing, Venus Energy, and other references to such petitioners, just exactly who are these groups, their leaders, directors, and investors? are they brownsville citizens texas residents or live somewhere in usua or even foreigners who are their political and financial backers in padrinos should it not be mandatory that they present more accurate and clear data on their own Identity as standard center owners. Secondly. The second thing to it is the purpose of this data. Will they function for a legitimate collection and maintenance for the use of reasons that of. For reasons that will benefit all citizens. Or is it a collection for such data for surveillance concerns controlled over certain individuals to be bought and sold to other agencies and governmental departments? Should they be publicly controlled and supervised entities rather than exclusively in the hands of private businesses? Secondly, ecological environment concerns for such centers. That will dramatically increase the use of natural resources, water, light, noise. Where is the presence of the federal and the state or state impact studies on such centers? it seems like a no-brainer that such valuable input would be appreciated or have such fundamental oversight groups been sidelined or ignored completely in the in this permission process in the area of our country where scarcity of water has been so controversial among so many concerns for proper residential growth in agribusiness in the present day valley Where the 1944 agreement of sharing water with Mexico was always on the table are these interests taken into consideration will these centers be the death knell to farmers and agribusiness in the Rio Grande Valley. Third workers rights and concerns with such mega projects in the data Center coupled with such. uh possible mega works to propose the refinery center where are the workers needs of these super projects especially with the cruel and intimidating deportation policy of such valuable amount of the orbiter and their need Would it not be more logical from a purely economic view to reverse such a deportation policy? Those white-collar workers in such tech areas also have their employment eliminated for their plans and for them to be retrained or retooled. As Pope Leo XIV mentioned in a pastoral letter on AI, The role of all workers must be a priority before merely super superficial economic profits on concern. Thank you.

If you could just wrap up. Thank you.

Mason Watson. Nathan Watson.

Hello, my name is Nathan Watson. I'm the Public Affairs Officer for the UTRGV College Democrats of Brownsville and a resident of Rio del Sol, and I support a 180-day moratorium on data centers in Brownsville. My neighborhood is close to the former proposed data center, and I remember when that building was a Walmart, and I would go get ice cream or a chicken sandwich with my grandmother after school. I remember when that building served to the community. I already worry about the projects at the Port of Brownsville and having a data center next door would have been maddening. I'm aware of the 90 day moratorium that the city is planning. And as I said, I support 180 day moratorium. And I would also like to propose that the city explores any way of enacting a moratorium on data centers until the end of the next legislative session. This would give the city more time to explore its options on data center controls and would allow for the city to see what new state regulations will be on data centers after signing it on in the Texas legislature. We know there will be bills introduced in the legislature that will reel in the freedom data centers have to run rampant in our state. And so I believe it would be best for the city government to impose a moratorium and closely watch the bills introduced to see what passes and what regulations they will have to navigate around. Thank you very much.

Uh, you're real, uh, Gabito. Uriel Gavito.

My name is Uriel. I'm a Brownsville resident and I will be speaking about the future of Brownsville. You know, I keep hearing this talking point that data centers are inevitable. but you are in a position of power and we can stop a data center. But what is inevitable is the consequences of climate change and greed. The days are hotter and we live in the wet bulb area with high humidity where the human body cannot cool itself from sweat if the wet bulb temperature gets above 95 degrees. I already know someone my age who has died this year mowing his grass outside, 28 years old. What will happen if the aging Texas electricity grid goes out again? I'll tell you what, it will be deadly. The oceans are hotter too and this means stronger hurricanes and we know how bad the flooding gets from the roads from simple rainstorms. Our topsoil is being degraded by big agriculture and monocropping techniques. The nutrients are being stripped from the soil. The dirt is getting grayer and grayer and this is an existential problem. with our current agricultural practices. The challenges of today and of the future require community. They can require community resilience. The challenges of the future are caused by corporations like Next Decade, extracting and refining LNG, fossil fuels. And it is scientifically proven that they pollute the air with cancer-causing pollutants. May Cohen, at the State of the City address, rewarded this company with an award. And Mr. Virgal, on your podcast, you interviewed Andrea Benton, who works for NextDecade. And I didn't hear one question or concern about the public health impacts of LNG. There seems to be only two reasons that I could think of for this, either ignorance you don't care and i don't know which one's worse i don't see how you are fit to lead with the way you have been leading but you do have an opportunity here a great opportunity to listen to your community because this is an easy one and lastly a suggestion maybe not have the screen have the countdown and have the speakers be a little bigger so that on instagram tick tock we could see who speaks just an idea thank you ethanie rosas is next

Thank you, and good afternoon. My name is Dr. Etienne Rosa. I'm a Brownsville resident. So over the past 40 years, the wealth of this nation has been steadily siphoned to the top. The past few decades have seen the largest rise of economic inequality in US history. Top 1% now owns just as much as the bottom 90%, and half of that ownership sits at the top 0.1%. Economic economic inequality isn't just a story about efficiency or justice, though, but about democracy itself. The American middle class, the direct embodiment of the American dream has been hollowed out parasitically by the uber rich at the top of that pyramid. And those concentrated gains have allowed them to amass resources and hijack our self-determination as a people. Clearly, this has not been a win-win formula, but incredibly, most of our politicians insist on following it. We have condoned a system that bleeds communities dry, uses people's own labor to enslave them while its fruits are enjoyed by a few others far removed who dangle the promise of prosperity that never arrives. Adding insult to injury, it has the audacity to demand blind adoration and loyalty while violently suppressing its critics and scapegoating the most vulnerable among us. Data centers encapsulate this process perfectly. Under the guise of development, they exploit our resources, our labor, our infrastructure, our creative pursuits to feed an AI machine so that billionaires may finally cut us out of the equation completely and lord over a world that exists for their twisted purposes alone. yet here we are wondering if it's a good idea to keep helping them reach that vision. To subsidize them further after our own subsidies have enabled them to buy off our democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. If the cost of progress is your culture, your environment, your people, your voice, and your very way of life, then my friends, that's just not progress at all. It's a trap, a ruse, and it is coming to a head. The AI bubble popping and wreaking havoc on our economy is not a matter of if, but of when. But when in doubt, look to democracy. We can see it plain as day, and you can feel it here today with all these people speaking. Far and wide, people are speaking out, and you don't need the numbers to listen to the will of your constituents. representing your people is a privilege and an honor i ran for office a few months ago and for now i did not get to have that honor but you do and people are demanding change you have a choice and a golden opportunity to represent us faithfully and courageously in these critical times and if you listen to that call and help us stop the injustice stand up to the bullies and shape a future that is truly sustainable and respectful of our will, you will be uplifted by us in ways that no billionaire corporation ever can. So the answer is clear, and it starts with all of you. We need a moratorium and an eventual full ban of data centers in Brownsville.

Christopher Basadu is next.

I live and grew up here in Brownsville. I'm Dr. Christopher Basadu. This sacred river, the Rio Grande, if you don't already know, is completely dry at Albuquerque in northern New Mexico. It is completely dry. There is no more snow melt in New Mexico, so there will be no more snow melt or water in the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico. Albuquerque's water at the Rio Grande, the same river that becomes our river here, has been drained because of a metadata center that chugs millions upon millions of gallons of water every day. It is up to you to make sure that that does not happen here in Brownsville. But remember, we're at the end of the river. Everybody uses this river before it comes to us. It is absolutely insane that you would even consider a data center. Beyond that, the fact that this council has ever operated with any nondisclosure agreement for any reason is a threat to all of our lives and shows us how little you regard us as human beings when we put you there. So don't you ever do any more business with a nondisclosure agreement and I ask you to cancel any nondisclosure agreement you have now, and especially with with water because we can't live without water. Next, you need to also understand. What are these data centers supposed to be for? They do not make our lives better. Our species has existed for thousands of years. And we can be happy and dance and sing and love one another. And we've done it for thousands of years without data centers.

We don't need them at all.

These data centers, not only are they environmentally destructive, but once they're built and become operational, they only need a skeleton crew. That's all they need. So they don't bring any jobs. On top of that, all of their servers, by the time they get the thing built, the computers and servers and the chips are already obsolete and they become waste, toxic waste. There's no reason for us to have one of these data centers here in Brownsville. And you need to understand that they are not helping any of us. And you might think that they might line your pockets, but It's all going to damage the environment even more than it's already being damaged. And I beg you to listen to all of us because we have knowledge and expertise. Stop pretending that we don't know what we're talking about. Thank you.

Diablo Velez. Victoria Sanchez.

Hi. Okay. My name is Victoria Sanchez and I'm from Brownsville, Texas. Whoo. Okay, let me start. Imagine hearing the sound, not for a few minutes, not for a few hours, but 24 hours a day. seven days a week, 365 days a year. For families and neighbors, school and parks nearby, could you live like this? Brownsville deserves more information about data centers. No to data centers. With that being said, how about we just vote on this? Just how we voted on the arena slash venue. Can we vote on that? Yeah. I know we're going to win. We got this Brownsville period.

Rebecca Hinojosa.

Hello, my name is Becca Hinojosa. I live here in Brownsville, Texas. I'm here on behalf of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. We are a local environmental organization. Our office is a few blocks away from here. And I am here to hand deliver a letter 15 Brownsville businesses and organizations have signed on to this letter. There's a copy for each of y'all. It's also in your email inbox. This letter is to urge you the Brownsville city commission to pass a minimum 180 day moratorium on data centers and to pass such strong ordinances that no data center can be built in the city of Brownsville and into any Colonia neighboring Brownsville. Okay. I'm going to read the list of Brownsville businesses and organizations that have signed on to our letter. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network has signed on. Woo! GSA RGV has signed on. The RGV Queer Run Club has signed on. The 956 Radical Library has signed on. Border Workers United has signed on. Fly the Flag Coffee has signed on. La Pieda, our local gallery, has signed on. People Moving People, the Run Club, has signed on. The Anna Briga Pottery Studio has signed on. Texas Rising has signed on. Ground Game Texas. Valley Interfaith. La Union Del Pueblo Entero Lupe has signed on. YDSA has signed on. Sunrise RGV has signed on. This is your community. We have given you a list of our demands. More organizations, more Brownsville businesses are asking to sign on. This list will keep growing and we will keep presenting new signers to you. This is your community. Listen to us. No data centers. Thank you.

Next speaker is is at a limit Martinez. And then following Luis Sanchez is the last speaker.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners. My name is Adlami Sanchez. Some of you already know me. I'm a mother of two young daughters. I was born here in Brownsville. This is my home. This is where I want to grow up. This is where I grew up. This is where my family is. This is where my kids, I want to raise them. I'm glad another mother showed up today. It's hard to be here sometimes, but we can do hard things, and here we are. I represent Valley Interfaith, Blue Bunny Brigade, Mother Forward, RGV Movement, and thousands of Brownsville residents who cannot be here today. I also stood with my neighbors for years fighting mill white. I'm glad Mr. Dennis Sanchez right here is here with us today in the room. He represented the company that polluted my neighborhood for more than 20 years. Because of that, I found my voice. So good luck with your Madera project north of Brownsville. I know you have a few public hearings and action items today, 12 and 13, for anybody that wants to stick around for that. We keep bringing Mill White up because we were told that we would learn from that experience. We were told that we would be proactive instead of reactive. So I'm asking you tonight, show us that we actually learned something. That Walmart data center application may have been withdrawn, but that does not mean the issue is over. It means that any particular application can come at any time and it does not prevent any company from coming and obtaining or wanting another property and asking for another approval. I'm sitting here, I'm talking to you today to ask you to regulate data centers. We're already seeing recent job postings in Cameron County for data center construction, utility power and data center infrastructure, construction management, quality assurance, procurement and other special aid positions. So that means we're at the center of this. It's coming. It does not prove that it's maybe coming right now, but that we're definitely in the range that they have an eye out for us. And that's exactly why I'm asking for you to act now. Before another application comes, before another project is already here and maybe too late, act now. Other cities are putting moratoriums in place and changing their zoning and ordinances because they understood that once these projects are approved, it's much harder to protest them or to protect the community. And our demand is simple. Give Brownsville a one-year moratorium on new data center development and applications. Use that year to actually listen to your residents and what other cities are doing. Protect our water, our electricity, our neighborhoods and our schools. and our kids, and most importantly, who's going to pay for this infrastructure. You might be afraid of legal lawsuits, but you know what? Get your legal team ready, because we're not going to stand down. And I know I have 11 minutes left, but I do want to add, there are many organizations that were mentioned today, DSA, South Texas Environmental Justice Network, the people, Frontera Strong, Lupe, Valley Interfaith, influences here. Altogether, we have access to thousands of residents here in the neighborhood, so we can make change.

The last speaker, Luis Sanchez.

Mayor Cohen, city commissioners, my name is Luis Sanchez, a lifelong resident. Los centros de datos consumen bastante electricidad, bastante agua y generan bastante ruido. Y se rumora que serán la infraestructura para las cámaras de vigilancia de tráfico. Estos edificios consumen pero no aportan, pagarían lo mínimo en impuestos y generarían pocos o ningún empleo. Hoy el empleo será el tema principal de mi plática. Antes que nada quisiera reconocer la atención que los comisionados han puesto en el caso del fraccionamiento Madeira en la última junta y por mantenerse informados a través de sus redes sociales, especialmente la comisionada Macías y el comisionado Villarreal. Sé que con el respaldo del pueblo y con su posición de autoridad, podemos defender la ciudad de Bronzeville de las injusticias que presentan los centros de datos y las cámaras de vigilancia. Si están presentes, me gustaría reconocer al grupo de Greater Bronzeville EDC en su éxito, atrayendo empresas accesibles como Nelnet, que al igual que Teleperformance, generan carreras accesibles para los ciudadanos. Cuando estemos invitando a compañías a nuestra ciudad, debemos tomar en cuenta las especialidades de nuestra comunidad o invertir, this is the point I want to make, o invertir en educación para que nuestra gente pueda tener acceso a una oportunidad de éxito con esas empresas multibillonarias. En Bronzeville hay talento. Tenemos excelentes trabajadores de mano de obra, de gastronomía, atención médica, educadores y artistas. En Bronzeville hay talento. es muy reconocido a nivel nacional que los centros de datos no aportan empleos a la comunidad. Como han dicho docenas de ciudadanos hoy, presentan más impacto negativo que positivo a la comunidad. Comisionados, alcalde y equipo de EDC, gracias por su tiempo y contamos con su apoyo total en contra de los centros de datos. Gracias.

uh that concludes the public comment we will uh proceed to uh to the presentation which is item number one is the presentation on the municipal court collection services provided by purdue brandon fielder collins and mott llp including the brownsville city fines and fees collection report for the period of october 1 2025 through march 31st 2026. we'll turn it over to staff

Good evening, honorable Mayor and Commission. We are joined by Purdue, who will be going through their presentation. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Commissioners. My name is Dan Romo. I'm with the law firm of Purdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins, and Mott. We were hired by the city and tasked with collecting your outstanding delinquent municipal court cases. And today I'm just going to give you just kind of a quick quick little overview of how we're doing for y'all. So I just want to kind of give you just kind of a quick background on this. So basically the municipal court tries to collect on on current cases that that are owed on delinquent cases that are owed to the city. And after a certain point by statute guy, you guys have an ordinance for basically once a case becomes 60 days past due from a defendant was failed to show up to court or was on a payment plan or some type of deadline that with the court after that point, that case becomes eligible to be sent over to us for us to be able to go to try to collect and try to get those defendants to come back and to fulfill their obligation with the city. So our numbers here are from basically from October 25th to March 26. We apologize. We were hoping to do this report earlier, but you guys are so busy with the agenda. It took us some time to finally get on the agenda. But here we are today. And what a great what a great council meeting. Do it. Let me tell you, um, So we've mailed out a little over 15,000 letters and whatever we mailing out. This is a big part of what we're doing before we do anything. We were doing address research. We're trying to get the best address possible because people like to move people, you know, their addresses change all the time. So the first thing we want to do, we mail letters, we'll make sure that we're mailing the best possible address. You can see the address updates there. It's a big part of our service. We're constantly doing address research and skip skip tracing, trying to get the best information possible so we can engage and make contact with the defendants about their delinquent case with the municipal court phone contacts. Our call centers were always in constant contact with defendants, reminding of their obligations and amounts and the cases that they owe to the municipal court. and SMS text messaging. We're also that this is something that we've been doing for about the last three years where we're texting defendants. This is kind of the new age now where everything is communication is done through text message. So we are also text messaging to defendants as well. Again, notifying them of their obligation to the municipal court. Uh, for that six month period, it's just total cash collected. We collect a little over $180,000 during during that time period. Um, things with municipal courts is kind of like there's always that that sweet spot when, you know, during the beginning of the year, people are getting their tax returns. So generally that's when we see, um, payments kind of increase because people are getting their income tax returns. they're getting the end of the year bonuses, stuff of that nature. So it's allowing defendants to be able to have that extra cash to be able to take care of their delinquent tickets.

So can I interrupt? What percentage of that then, like of the cases that you referred and possible amount collected? What percentage is that 180,000?

That one is tough. I'd have to go back and to look exactly for just those particular numbers there on the cash collected. Not only is the cash collected as far as some of our numbers, but also what we call non cash. Those are where we mailed out And we got to the finish to come back. But then the court through alternative resolution of the case, community service, jail credit and other things help resolve the case as well. Um, so some of those numbers are also, um, we'd include those numbers. So we just wanted to show you, hey, this is what we're doing for cash. I can certainly find out what what that exact percentage is for that particular amount. But with with, um, Court fines and fees, it's different than delinquent property tax. It's always revolving every month. We're getting new cases and we're getting payments in. And so it's really kind of fluctuate. So without kind of giving you a concrete, but certainly, you know, we can give you a collection percentage just for that particular six month period. We're more than glad to provide that to you. So one of the things that we do for the court is every year again during during the tax season, we perform what's called a case resolution campaign. Uh, it's aka used to be back in the day used to be called the great warrant roundup. It's just that time of the year where we're really pushing out. It's the one time a year that we mail out on everything that we have for the court. It's that big push. We mail out, um, brightly colored postcards to all the defendants, reminding them again of their obligations of the court fines and fees that are owed to the municipal court. And so to be able to support that particular mailing, we do a series of media blast. And so we do a digital billboard here in the city as well. You can kind of see some of the ads again, just kind of a public service type announcement, just letting defendants know of the obligation and the campaign that's going on constantly promoting The campaign that we're doing there, so we're doing billboards, digital ads, newspapers to the Brownsville Herald, the monitor through the website again, just. All the little social media platforms must we can we're continuing to keep letting them know about their outstanding obligation. There's a little. deal there with our text kind of what our text messages that we sent out to defendants. We put our logo on there because we very first very first started out. A lot of people were like, hey, I'm getting this message from some some people called Purdue Brandon. Who are these people? So just so they know that it's valid and they know that's coming from a vendor from the city that they understand that that text message is legit. This is just kind of a neat little thing just to kind of show you as we breaking down the debts that are owed right now. I believe the municipal court has turned over a little over 17Million dollars over to the firm for us to work. And so this kind of just kind of helps to show you, like, by zip code where a lot of these debts are coming from. It's just one of those things. It's just kind of just. help you understand where some of the stats coming from. We represent city of South Padre. And so obviously when we show them this, a lot of it is people from everywhere else other than here because you have a lot of tourists that are going down the South Padre. So it's just kind of just show you where some of your debtors are located. Again, now this is to the whole United States to really show you that people from all around the country come down here and you can see that people have tickets from all around the United States. It's crazy to see that, right? Like, oh my God, even up in Seattle or Vermont, that people owe tickets for the city of Brownsville, but they do. And that's the reason why you guys hire us is because we're just an extension of the court to be able to go out there and try to continue, keep trying to collect on these debts that are owed to the municipal court. So from the date from the inception of when we started until now, um, total cash collected, um, for that period up to March of 754,390. Um, again, this report should have been done earlier and I apologize for that current numbers. We are at 912. 1195 as of today of cash collected what we're doing. And as I mentioned before, we are currently working 17.8Million dollars of current outstanding delinquencies in the municipal court. Again, um, we just want to talk about that, you know, collections. This is a, this is a tough business. Um, certain times during economic times that this has been, you know, we, we see the trends and what we're seeing this year is a little bit tougher than last year. Last year, our collections up a little bit higher this year. Our collections are down. It's not just here. It's everywhere else where we collect. We, you know, we collected all corners of the state. And so we have just seen kind of a drop in collections. Times are tough. Gas is high. Costs are going up. And so unfortunately, what happens is when people can't pay, then your delinquencies go up. So our delinquencies almost doubled from last year to this year. And so, when when times are good, people can page link, which is down because people are paying and so it's just a kind of a revolving thing. And so we'll continue to keep working with the court and keep doing the things that we can. We're going to go ahead and conduct a secondary case resolution. Um, uh, mailing campaign in October to help kind of stimulate and get collections back up again. It's just a, it's just a constant. Uh, thing that we're working with with the court and figuring out ways and how we can try to get some of those defendants to pay, or at least to try to resolve the case. But more importantly, just show up to court because the majority of the outstanding cases that we are working are people that have never showed up to court at all. Happy to take any questions. This one's easy, right? Compared to compared to earlier, right? Well, thank you all very much. We appreciate your business and we'll continue to keep working hard trying to get some of that money. So thank you.

Next presentation. Thank you. Um, I missed to receive a presentation on the U. S. L. Steering committee.

Turn it over to staff.

good evening uh mayor pro tem and uh commission our honored guest uh today i'm gonna speak on uh giving you a brief update on where we are at with our usl exploration and some of the events and occurrences that have come out of that during the evolution of us moving forward as you know brownsville oh sorry there it is As, you know, Brownsville is a city based off of soccer as far as it's intertwined with our community and it is also connecting us by internationally with our neighbors to the South. It is a sport that we have a history of excelling in within the last 20 years. We've won. five state championships in 2024. The most recent was by St. Joseph Academy. We have many, many youth and semi-pro style academies here in Brownsville. We have a tremendous amount of participation from not only our children, but our young adults and even people as they are retiring out. And as we move forward last year, we started with a letter of intent in September 2025. And as you know, and if you may be aware, we did a feasibility study to see how viable a relationship in bringing a professional team in. By doing that letter of intent, we, with the USL, they actually funded the feasibility study. We as a city were part of that participation in our stakeholders. It focused in on the sports park specifically, and how entertainment district could also be brought into the mix of the professional team and the USL team as a complete package. While we were in the midst of interacting with our community and engaging with stakeholders, We were able to create a steering committee and that steering committee, its 1st meeting we hosted in December of 2025, where we were able to bring in various stakeholders that would be part of this soccer professional soccer environment. And those stakeholders came up with 4 key. Uh. 4 key focuses that they would like us to move forward with and I believe the city supported that and these are the 4 key focuses. The 1st, 1 was to create a sports commission, which this governing body did this year of July 21st. And we're moving along with evolving that sports commission by having open. open applications starting September 1st, 2026, where there will be eight members to that sports commission. Seven will be voting. There'll be an additional ex-officio that will sit on that. Um, we're inviting as many people from the community from various backgrounds to be on that sports commission. You don't actually have to have sports background. We're looking to ensure that we get gather as much input and diversity from all of our portions of our community aspects of our community. The second finding that came out of the steering committee was a regional youth soccer pathway. And this is similar to the European style of football or soccer and South American style as well, where you have youth sports, youth soccer leagues, then you have academies and they feed up to semi-pro and then pro. Uh, and that is something that we're in the midst of still working on. We do have a meeting tomorrow with that those members of the steering committee again. And that will be really focused on this finding here to help move forward with that. A third finding from the steering committee was ensuring that the leagues that currently are Brownsville leagues, are Brownsville academies, have access to the fields. It says on construction, but it's overall access to the fields that we currently have and future fields. And that is something that the Commission has repeatedly supported. And even in discussions moving forward, the City will ensure that we tie that into arrangements with our USL professional team as they come in. And then the fourth finding is something of access and role. And again, that is how do we tie in partnerships with our current soccer leagues and academies into the USL system and specifically to the new upcoming Brownsville professional team. And that is the basis of the relationship that the city has put forward. when interacting with the USL, and it's something that the findings were in agreement with and aligned with very well. This is a timeline of where we've been and where we're heading. As I stated prior in September of 2020-25, we did the announcement of the letter intent with the USL, but it happened months before that as far as the coordination with USL. WITH A VISIT TO SPOKANE, WASHINGTON TO SEE HOW A COMMUNITY HAS INTEGRATED THE PROFESSIONAL USL TEAM INTO THEIR CITY AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS IN A VERY SYNAGETIC WAY. AND THEN WE MOVED FORWARD INTO 2025 DECEMBER WITH A STAIRING COMMITTEE. THAT WAS THE FIRST MEETING. After that, we hosted several other meetings. We also did various exploratory visits to other cities outside of Spokane with various teams representing the city to look at Other cities success with teams, mixed usage projects, and how they integrate with the city and citizens and are able to be successful. So we want, we were doing our work to find out how to make sure we're entering this relationship to be successful tomorrow the 19th. We do have our 4th steering committee. meeting with our local teams and academies. Next week on August 27th, we'll have an update announcement of where we are with the progress of ownership and investment for a professional USL team here in Brownsville. And then, as I did mention on September 1st, 2026, we will be accepting applications for the 1st Sports Commission Advisory Board. We have next steps here, and those next steps are to continue with discussions and going through the due diligence process with the USL. their owner led a model that they have and that style of investment and to ensure that we are moving along with simultaneously with our sports commission advisory board and our steering committees specifically on soccer so that we're ensuring that we have citizens not only input but their collaboration as partners as we move through this journey to bring a professional USL team here to Brownsville as well as a beautiful mixed use project here in Brownsville, specifically at the sports park. So, is there any questions at this time?

No questions, just a comment. This is very exciting. Obviously, it's nothing good comes easy, like they say, right? This has been a long journey, but I'm really excited to see that the community has also been very receptive. This is something that they really want, and to be able to not replace but include the existing leagues is something that makes me really proud with this commission. But thank you for all the work that you all do.

yes sir it's a team effort and thank you for all the participation uh from the mayor and all the commissioners to ensure that it is a collaboration of all of us one city moving forward to one uh overall goal to bring professional soccer and incorporate our youth to have a pathway to professional soccer here in brownsville so thank you very much thank you

uh next on the agenda we'll move on to the city manager update starting with number one um as the driver a safety training and then following uh that we will have the pet of the of the month adoption spotlight we'll turn it over to mr guard michael chandler from our um

O. D. H. R. Department. He works with our risk and safety program. We wanted to share this data with you because we have recognized we we have some issues that we need to address. You know, in the spirit of transparency, we want you to be aware of these issues and that we have a plan to move forward to fix it. Um, what we want to have is accidents not happen. Because when accidents don't happen, we end up not spending money that we can then use for other things. So we thought it was important to make you aware of this. And Michael's going to lead this conversation.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Commissioners. Thank you for this time. As Mr. Gard was saying, we've identified this increasing trend in our city vehicles, city operators, where we've increased our motor vehicle accidents throughout the years. And we'll be reviewing some of that data and what we're doing to help reduce that and prevent that. As I was saying, we're not only detecting an increase in motor vehicle accidents, but what we call at fault vehicle accidents, whereas the city employees were the ones that caused the accident. So this is what we're going to be focusing on at this time to reduce and eliminate as much as possible. These incidents. Because besides the amount of incidents, we've also found that the costs have been increasing. This is due to mostly litigation costs. But the difference from a not at fault incident versus an at fault incident could be up to 10 times the cost. Because that's when litigation gets involved, injuries are involved. So this increases the cost of these claims. And this is why we want to focus on reducing them. and at the same time since we're calling them at-fault incidents we realize that these are preventable incidents things that we can work on and difference that when we're not at fault if somebody hits us well that's going to be hard to to deal with that but we're going to focus on what we can do as city employees and city departments to try to reduce these incidents And so we're going to look at reducing or we saw, I'm sorry, detected the trend of more accidents, higher cost. But we've also found that there's also a loss of productivity when we have a vehicle out of commission. Also, we find that we can have injured employees through these accidents. So all of these are increased costs through these accidents. And that's why we've decided to focus on this as well. And a big thing is also the reputational risk for the city as well. Nobody wants to be seen the city is a fault accident. So this is also another reason why we're focusing on this. This is project, as you can see here, I have a graph of the claims that we've had. Throughout the years, and although you can see that from 2020 to 24, they're kind of stable. If you look at the graph on the right side, you see the cost continue to increase. Again, this is also legal litigation. There's the cost of repair, but the biggest cost is obviously the litigation and you see that increasing trend throughout the years. And that's why we're working on reducing that. And I know you might see the kind of drop there in 2026 just to let you know that, uh. We have up to two years for these claims to mature. So right now we're still receiving some claims even from 2024. So it might take up to two years for claims to be received in the city for us to deal with motor vehicle accidents that we're at fault for. And just just show you a difference in the cost, an average cost of the claims. These are 2026 claims, 10 claims that we had $85,000, which gives us an average of around $8,000 for a no fault claim versus when we're at fault. We're at around $27,000. So that's a 3x cost difference there when we're at fault. So again, this is why we're focusing on these types of claims. And here we have a list of the different types of motor vehicle accidents that we had. The ones in Burgundy or Maroon, those are the ones that we're at fault for. And so those are, as you can see, if we sum those up, that's kind of almost the majority of those claims. And again, these are what we're going to be working on. what are we going to do about all these now that we detected all of this we we went out and searched for different training uh programs and we found three nationally recognized program safety driver safety training programs and the one we landed on we decided because it was first of all uh b metro is already using them and they've had great results with them second of all the thing that we love from them a difference from the other two is they have an over the road or on the road training module. So it's not just going to be classroom training, but we're actually going to go on the road and do the evaluation of each of the drivers to make sure that we're learning these new behaviors and habits that we need to improve on to reduce these incidents and accidents. And these are some of the steps that we're working on the next step that we're actually currently working on next week. We'll start the train the trainer. So we're going to have 10 employees from the city be trained as trainers. So that we can then roll out to the rest of the city employees. The plan is to get every city driver. They have them trained within the scope or the course of a year have the every city driver train. So so that they're certified to operate the city vehicles. And this is kind of what the training plan is looking like for the rest of the year. We're planning on starting with the police department and EPW. These are higher risk, higher frequency departments, are also some of our larger departments, and that's why we're focusing on them. And as you can see, for the rest of the year, we're planning about two trainings a week. And that way we'll cover about, if my math is correct, around 250 employees before the end of the year. And like I said, the scope of the course of a year we'll finish covering every city employee and what are the benefits what's the what's the goal of all of this we're looking to not only reduce the cost reduce the crashes but we want to make the city a safer place to work at we want to make sure that employees come go back safe home so this is something that we want to make sure that everybody is safe as well as increase the public trust And also not affect the operations right as we talked about earlier once a vehicle, a piece of equipment is out of commission work gets behind. So we want to make sure that we're operationally running at 100%. So, and this is the plan to reduce the cost as well. And the amount of crashes. I don't know if anybody has any questions. we currently have a driving policy or is that something we are entertaining thank you for that question yes actually that's something that we're going to be working in parallel i have a safety driver training safety driver policy so make sure that everybody aware as a city driver these are the requirements this is what we expect of a driver and this is what's going to happen if the requirements aren't followed absolutely that way we can hold accountability thank you michael

Next update is the pet of the month adoption spotlight.

It's time for my favorite agenda item. We have a pet of the month and we're also share a fun fact.

Good evening, commissioners and mayor. Thank you so much for the opportunity for us to go ahead and come and spotlight. So we'll go ahead and begin. She's writing in style. She has her own little stroller today. So I did want to go ahead and mention that August is Clear the Shelters. And what that is, it's a nationwide pet adoption and fundraising campaign that's put together through NBC Universal and Telemundo and a couple other organizations. And they help monetary and they also help get the word out like we're doing here today. All right, so we'll go ahead and begin. So today we do have Annie. If you notice on the screen, she's not there. We were fortunate enough to have every single dog that we wanted to spotlight get adopted. So we are super happy for that. And so today we brought Annie. But I did want to go ahead and touch up on the type of animals that we do get at the shelter. So I'm not sure if you guys remember, but last month we did go ahead and bring a dog named Bridget. Her puppies grew beautifully. And if you look here on the third dog, Stormy, that was one of her puppies. So Bridget's six puppies, fully adopted. And unfortunately, she is still at our shelter. So if you are interested, please definitely head over to our website. We also did have Tucker, who I believe, if I'm not mistaken, was also one of her babies. um and so the fun fact or i'm sorry the fun thing about this is that we never know what type of animals are coming into our shelter so we tend to try to guesstimate and so you can see the difference between stormy and tucker same mom just different different in appearance so here in the middle we have kismet he was a or she was a four-month-old puppy and she was a daughter to destiny here They did go ahead and get adopted to the same family. And we love whenever we're able to do that just because we're able to keep them together. And that is our main goal. Now, if you're interested in any of the dogs that we brought today, Annie or Bridget, you are more than welcome to visit our shelter. We're located at 416 FM 511 in Brownsville, Texas. Every pet that we have at our facility is available for $25. They come spayed and neutered, vaccinated, microchipped, rabies vaccinated, and flea and tick. We try to make it so that for the first few months, you're doing nothing but... um getting the dog or the cat acclimated into your home and you don't have to worry about anything else see that dog is looking at will I will bring her around if everybody wants to touch her. And so our fun fact for today is more of a did you know? So did you know that one unspayed female dog can have 12 to 18 puppies in just one year? Without spaying or neutering, those puppies can grow up and have litters of their own, quickly increasing the numbers of our pets in need of loving homes. So that is one thing we do want to go ahead and highlight that our pets do come spayed and neutered this way we are not contributing to the problem and we all have a solution thank you so much everyone for your time great job team Anybody have comments or I just want to make a quick plug in as well.

You know, if we all love our furry friends, if you can't adopt like me, you can always volunteer at our animal shelter as well. We have residents come in, they'll read to the to the animals, they'll take them out. So you're all are welcome. There's always something to do.

Thank you.

So moving on to the consent agenda items for your consideration is items one through nine as item 10 was handled yesterday at the special meeting. So for your consideration is items one through nine.

Motion to approve consent items one through nine.

I would like to pull number two. I move to approve one and three through nine. Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Martinez to approve consent agenda items one and then three through nine. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Number two.

Consideration for number two is consideration and action to approve the second one year renewal for the professional services agreement for marketing and the advertising services. RFP ASC 89-0623 with Dovetail Inc. for the Brownsville South Quadrant Island at the International Airport for an amount not to exceed $450,000. We'll turn it over to the staff.

Hi. I just have some quick question. What return on investment did we get this past year from the $450,000, and what measurables do you have for the renewal?

So our load factor has been increasing since we started the campaigns last year. It's a little hard to track on the APIs, but last year we were around 70, 75% overall, and this year we've been in the 80s, closer to the 80s.

Do you have specific measurables specifically for the marketing and the expense of $450,000?

Yeah, we get these monthly reports. And I can share that with you as well if you would like for me to prepare that. But I mean, I already have it prepared from month to month with that company. And we can provide that to you as well.

I think the company is also tasked with specific objectives.

Correct. Yeah. And right now we're, if this contract is approved, we'll start working with media planning for next year. For this fiscal year, we incorporated some widgets into the website so we can track better those ROIs, which is now they can, we can book lights through our website that's how we're able to convert some of those numbers, as well as the load factors going up. And then you know that that's the website side we do the production of the commercials and all the marketing efforts for the year that once the year starts, and then we start. Also, the. seasonal campaigns, which is. Semana Santa, summer break, winter Texans time and spring break. And then for the additional 50 you saw last year coming in was for especially one route, which was a new route. And we've also seen it's been in the 90s that that specific route.

Is that why it's 450? The amount?

Yeah, so it's 400 and then 50. It's only for the beginning of their service. Thank you.

And we will be sharing the updated MRG numbers with Breeze. We should be getting those soon for the last month. I know that we've had really good load factors on Breeze and that 50,000 was added specifically to be talking about Breeze. So we'll provide all that data to you.

On anecdote before we if you don't have any more questions, but we had one flight at 101% load factor. How is that possible is because it was a fully booked flight and there was also a baby a mom carrying their baby.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I move to approve.

Second, got a first from Commissioner yet again, and a second from me from Commissioner Martinez to approve number two and the consent agenda. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

Which one is it? Number three?

Mayor Rotem, I would like to move individual item for consideration number three out of order to the next item, please.

Is anyone opposed? Yes, we'll go ahead and move it. So we'll jump into item number three, which is a consideration and action to approve the guaranteed maximum price number two with Noble Texas Builders LLC for the construction of the Brownsville Public Safety Complex under the construction manager at risk contract RFQ number 142-25-EPW-RFQ in the amount of $74,181,729.

Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem and City Commissioners. Tonight we'll have Ms. Kimberly Salinas. She will be go ahead and presenting this item in detail. And if you have any questions, please let us know.

Hi, good evening, Mayor, City Commission, City leadership and audience. My name is Kimberly Salinas and I'm with the Enterprise Project Management Office. I wanted to start off with a project overview of the public safety complex. Our construction manager at risk is Noble Texas Builders and the current status of the project is bid package number one, which includes the utilities, the earthwork and the generator allowance for the project, which was approved in June. It's currently under construction. For bid package number two, it's currently under procurement and that is the one that we are recommending for approval tonight. And that's in the amount of $74,181,729. That brings our total guaranteed maximum price for the project to $81,934,118. And the targeted substantial completion date is fall 2028, specifically September 2028 with final completion hopefully in October or November. So as a breakdown for bid package number two, we do have the bid package number one with the accepted alternatives and value engineered items, which will be discussed later on in this presentation, including general conditions, CMR fee and subcontracted construction work in the amount of about 68 million. We have CMAR contingency in 672,125, and we have an owner's contingency of 1.8 million, as well as it also includes allowances in about 5 million, which brings us to a total GMP for bid package number two of 74 million. Just wanted to point out that the owner's contingency does have A rollover from bid package number one, so we did have a savings in the generator allowance we did allocate 3 million for the generator and we had a savings of one point about 2 million and we're asking for that to be moved over into the owners contingency. So an overview of the allowance, the $5 million does encompass the sign allowance, the bidirectional amplifier radios, which is the emergency radio communications. mock-up allowance parking canopy allowance delegated design canopy connection the atomic clocks and the key tracking system mat room floor and wall mats and the integrated visual audio visual system and the perimeter security fencing so they are allocated to specific items the allowances as a project summary We did have an approved construction budget for the project of 75 million. And we did approve bid package number one in June, which was 7.7 million. And we are recommending approval of bid package number two with the accepted alternatives of value engineered items in the amount of 74,181,729. So we do have a project variance from the final GMP from the original budget to the final GMP of an additional 6.9 million. The project team, which includes the design architect, which is Megamorphosis, our internal staff here with EPMO and the construction manager at risk, which is Noble. We did evaluate the design and the scope and the costs throughout the design of the project. We did try to identify some saving opportunities and minimize the impact of the project budget. And through that, we did identify some significant cost drivers, right, which are mentioned in the bottom, which is more than anything a comparison from our estimated budget to the bids that we actually receive for the items. Some specific items was, for example, the utilities grading and landscaping and the perimeter security fencing. We did estimate that at about 6.2 million and the bids we received did come in at about 10.3. For the security screening equipment that was estimated to come in at about 20,000 and the bids we received was about 1.6 million. So we did have a significant variance in our estimated budget versus the bids received and that variance is about 5.6 million.

Uh, commission mayor, I just wanted to add a comment. Uh, the original estimate was at a different site location when we prepared the estimate. So that's why we have the variation in cost when we moved up to the industrial park area. As you all know, it's a newly developed area. The cost of utilities and infrastructure added additional money for the for the construction of the project. So I just wanted to share that with the team.

So in addition to that, we did evaluate the design and we did provide some alternatives in the bid documents to see where we can add some savings to the project. We did move forward with alternative number three and number five, and that was to add the vehicle storage canopy as well as a new fuel tank. One of the alternatives that we didn't accept was to not pay the south parking lot a large portion of it because we wouldn't meet the parking needs per the study that was provided by our consultant.

Another

Other items that are consultant helped us with our noble is they provided us with a list of some value engineering items, and it was a significant list about 33 items. We did have a cost saving within that of about 990,000. Some large items that were on there that we did not accept was the landscaping, the value engineering of the landscaping. We wouldn't meet our own ordinance, so we did not recommend moving forward with that item, as well as the generator allowance to receive the credit for that. We decided to move that on to the owner's contingency and as well as the trellis canopy. We decided not to move forward with removing that from the public safety complex. So with that, we came with a total guaranteed maximum price for bid package number two in the amount of $74,181,729. So risk and schedule. If the GMP is approved tonight, we would proceed with construction. We'd maintain our current project schedule, and we'd also secure the negotiated construction pricing. If the GMP is not approved tonight, it would delay construction and the schedule process as well as potential loss in the current pricing and possibly a cost escalation if we were to bid the construction documents again. So the recommended action tonight is staff recommends approval of the guaranteed maximum price for bid package number two in the amount of $74 million. 181,729. Thank you.

Mayor and Commission, I want to step in here for a minute.

First of all, I want to thank the group and the committee, as well as Noble Construction, as our CMAR. I want to thank Doro and the team. I want to thank everybody that's been involved with this. I can tell you the original numbers were much, much higher. They have worked very, very hard and diligently to bring it down to this level without cutting the bone. This is the project that I believe needs to be done. It's the one that's going to meet our needs. And talking about needing the extra funding, because we did sell the $150 million in COs, we are collecting interest on that. And those interest earnings are going to go toward covering this overage, so we will not need to sell any other CEOs in order to cover the cost of this project. In my experience, a project of this size, they came within 7% of the budget. That's pretty good, especially with the changing landscape and construction almost daily. And so I'm going to urge you and recommend their recommendation that you approve this GMP and we get this project moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Guard. Kimberly had a quick question. Do we have an estimated timeline for this? I don't think there was on the slides.

September of 2028 would be substantial completion and move in around October. Get the furniture and everything set. Thank you.

Mr. Guard, I do have a question about total price. I mean, I know that we saw this here, but for total price. Total cost, just for us to know. Does this include all of the technology, furniture, everything else?

The one thing that's not here is the design that we've already spent, the $6 million in megamorphosis. So you would have to add that for the total, total cost.

Sure.

That should include technology, FF&E, furnitures, fixtures. Maybe we might have to buy coffee cups. But I think it has just about everything else included. Thank you. I have one more question.

Uh, change orders. What's their guarantee?

Maximum price is guaranteed maximum. So there will be no change or we will. We will do our I'm not gonna promise, but I'm a stickler for it. I want to absolutely hold their feet to the fire. There are contingencies on here that ought to be able to cover anything that's out of whack. The big ones have been identified the landscaping and the and the screen and perimeter safety.

Those were identified in a previous slide or go forward, so we have 1.8 million roughly for contingency or unforeseen items that we have throughout the project that we can utilize or to stay within this budget that we're presenting to you tonight.

So i'm i'm i'm confident they worked like I said they worked really hard on this and I don't think they try, you know, sometimes when you try to do a project this big. you try to cut some things out of it and then you get to the end you're like ah we really got to add that back then they're asking for contingencies we're asking i believe very firmly we're asking you for a real number so i'm not going to promise there won't be a change order but we're going to work really really hard to keep it right here no and the reason i ask is i did hear you mention that the number started a lot higher it did brought down i just want to make sure that we are considering

everything.

And they did. And PD was heavily involved in the decisions about things that were changed, like use this finish instead of that finish. So we have buy-in from the entire team. Thank you.

I, I do see, uh, Mr in the audience and noble builders and I just wanted to say, thank you. Um, for on a separate note on the cannery project. And, uh, and the fact that we're using a local company, I think that's very important for the city of Brownsville. And I know that this is tied to it as well. And, uh, and. Thank you for for the excellent work that your company does and for being local. I think that's very important to a lot of people in this room and a lot of people up here in the commission. I move to approve second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Cardenas. Are those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

All right. All in favor? Move into the public hearing. Item number one. as a public hearing in action on the first reading to adopt the end of the year budget amendment ordinance number 20261781B to amend the fiscal year 2026 budget. We'll turn it over to staff.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Commissioners. My name is Steven Muz with the Financial Services Department, and we have our end of the year amendment request for the fiscal year 2026 budget. This includes revenues from 2Million from sales tax surplus revenues 3Million from the bridge fund and we currently are projecting an unassigned fund balance at the end of the year of 34Million, which would be 8 days over a 70 day requirement and present to use those 8 days. approximately 3.26 in this amendment. And we also have some housekeeping items that include, these are self-funded items from contributions or fees that were collected that we just need to establish the budget for them. So for general fund, this is the largest group of budget amendments. You can see the category, which category of revenue covers the expense, color coded. So we have the DHR agreement, $1 million set aside for that, a transfer to the Capital Reserve and Economic Development Incentive Fund. That is the one day equivalent that we included in our investment, not investment policies, but our financial policies. We have $2.6 million related to the cannery construction split between transfer from the bridge fund and the sales tax funds. We're establishing the budget for our liabilities, uh, insurance, so as budget for a disaster recovery system. We're also establishing the budget for a retiree health, uh, insurance. The county appraisal districts fees for property tax collections, uh, 176,000 for service and contingencies within general fund. And that's a special project items as well. 272,000. We also have some personnel compensation, which included position reclassifications and salary adjustments, $59,000 for our CMD department. We have a transfer to our motor vehicle and fleet and facility services fund, our internal services funds, as well as a transfer to the credit fund in support of vehicle equipment for our inspections department. And then we have 43,000 for the city secretary, some software costs and some maintenance costs for the fire department. And then the fees and contributions are going towards some special projects related to animal services, the library and municipal court, as well as some personnel professional services that are funded by these donations. For the convention and tourism, we're requesting a budget amendment there to cover some personnel costs related to temporary workers. This is our debt service fund. We're establishing the budgeted transfer from the airport. They contribute $250,000 as well as a transfer from the landfill as they will be contributing towards offsetting the cost of our debt service. From the bridge fund is the transfer will be transferring into general fund as well as funds used to cover some contingency costs and those building inspection vehicles. The motor vehicle parking fund, which is where we charge most of our downtown expenses, will be used to cover the downtown cameras as well as some funds set aside for the first Friday events. Within the landfill, we'll be using $1.5 million from their fund balance for the landfill sanitation building construction, the transfer to cover debt service, and some PUB collection fees, as well as other operational costs. With the golf center fund, we'll be transferring from the CO funds to purchase some golf course pumps. And these will not only service the golf course, but the surrounding areas, improve drainage in the surrounding areas. Within the Employee Benefit Fund, we're establishing a budget of $1 million, and this is related to the employee contribution increase that took effect in January. We're establishing the budget to offset those. And then from Pleasant Facilities, we're initiating another transfer to cover some personnel costs related to the customer service personnel. For the Information Technology Fund, the transfer is to cover some subscription costs related to Microsoft and Excel as well as the disaster recovery software this concludes the summary of our end of year amendment requests we have any questions on these items

So this is a public hearing at this time. If there are any citizens that would like to speak on a public hearing item on this public hearing item, please come to the podium and state your name and address. You'll have up to three minutes.

Mayor Pro Temo moved to close public hearing. Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Martinez and a second from Commissioner Macias to close the public hearing. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Any motions to approve?

I'm going to approve.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Cardenas. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

Okay, carries 7-0. Moving on to the second public hearing. As a public hearing and action on the first reading, I'm on ordinance number 2026-1815 of the City of Brownsville to adopt the fiscal year 2027 annual budget for the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, BCIC.

Good evening, Mayor, City Commission. So for fiscal year 2027, BCIC's proposed budget is approximately at 10.1 million. This budget was approved by our board on our July 27 board meeting and was presented to city commission during the August 4th budget workshop. So no changes were requested and no changes have been made. We are projecting 9.3 million in revenues, with approximately 82 coming from sales tax. The remaining revenue comes from interest generated, the GBEDC partnership, federal EDA funding, and other program income. We're also carrying forward approximately 709,000 in fiscal year 2026 funds. that were previously approved by our board were not spent. So these are not new revenues. With those funds included, total sources equal total expenditures and the budget is balanced. On the expenditure side, we have approximately $4 million for the City of Brownsville Quality of Life projects. This reflects the City's 50% allocation of Type B self-tax revenue and also includes the $500,000 for the Sports Park MNO. For BCAC operations, it's at $2.2 million, which supports staff, technology, insurance, professional services, and the infrastructure needed to deliver our programs. Approximately $1.9 million is allocated to community development, and that includes community initiatives, big grants, big lift, and community sponsorships. $1.1 million supports entrepreneurship and innovation, and that includes the accelerators, the eBridge Academy, prototyping, and RGV Startup Week. So with about 7% of those programs supported. Uh, we also have approximately 446 for city service contracts that includes the airport depth service, the administrative and HR service agreement and 245,000 for strategic projects and investments, which would require board approval before funds are committed. And then lastly, we have the rich revolving loan fund that separate from our 10.1 million budget. These are federal eda grant funds. These are not sales tax funds and are maintained in a separate separate fund. So that concludes the overview. And again, there have been no changes from the budget presented to the commission at the August 4th workshop. So on behalf of BCIC board of directors and staff, we are requesting the commission's approval for our fiscal year 2027 budget.

Thank you, Victoria. I had a quick question. I didn't see the numbers from last year, but I'm just curious in the categories that you showed us, if you can go back to that slide. Which one of those, or are they all relatively the same? Did you see an increase that we started investing more like in the program, like the big lift or do you follow my question?

Can you repeat the question? I'm sorry.

Is there a big difference in any specific category that we saw that we're investing more into this year?

The newest program right now that we had is big lift. So this fiscal year, we included 500,000. We're going to roll over those 500,000 to this fiscal year, but we're going to add 500,000 more. We do have a lot of requests from the city on the businesses, so a lot of interest on that program. Other than that, everything else remains the same. community community initiatives, which is used to be named the quality of life for PCC, it did went down a little bit, but because we had to allocate more funds for big lift and other programs to continue existing.

Thank you. So this is a public hearing if there is there's anyone in the public that would like to speak on public hearing item number two, please come to the podium state your name and address, you'll have up to three minutes to talk. cena i'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing to close second um i've got a first from commissioner cardenas and a second from commissioner messias all those in favor all right any opposed motion carries vote to approve second i've got a first from commissioner villarreal and a second from commissioner cardenas to approve the proposed bcic budget um any opposed or sorry i should start out all those in favor all right any opposed motion carries

carry saving uh seven to zero moving on to the public hearing number three there's a public hearing and action on the first reading i'm on ordinance number two zero two six uh dash uh uh one eight one six of the city of brownsville to adopt the fiscal year 2027 annual budget for the greater brownsville edc we'll turn it over to the madam mayor pro tem and members of the commission

including your packet is a detailed budget for the fiscal year 2027 and just for the record that same budget was including the august 4th meeting as well and at the request of the commission we've attached our our organizational chart for the greater brownsville edc is just a little snapshot before we get into the nuts and bolts of the actual budget everything that we do in our shop is based on research due diligence and intelligence that research starts with our business development person as you can see in the organizational chart and from there it goes to our marketing division where they package that information and then we promote brownsville to a very very and very targeted audience Our audience, our Fortune 1000 company executives, businesses, enterprises are looking to do business either on the border or in Texas. And then eventually, that's how we start producing our leads. So that goes down to our business development person, cross-border industrial development person, then our global engagement person. Once they grab it, then that's where it nets us our prospects and then our projects. and then that's uh we started hosting prospects and or projects and that's where upper management which is everybody like in a vp role including myself board members and as a matter of fact some of you have been involved in some of the prospecting that we've done here in the last year year and a half sometimes it takes months but usually it takes years to land these projects so once we get to a point where we're getting ready or at least we think that we are closing a deal Then that's where Salvador is engaged, which is finance, our different VPs and our board's executive committee, and trying to come up with the best incentives package program for the prospect if we think it's a good fit for the Brownsville area. In the case that we actually close the deal, which is a win, then marketing and PR comes back out, and now that's where we promote the heck out of the project.

There's more leads that come out of that.

Once you start promoting the project, case in point, what happened with Saranac lately. It was a team effort between ourselves, Port of Brownsville, the school district in Port Isabel, as well as Cameron County and the governor's office. Everybody's promoting that project. But when there's a win, everybody's walking 10 feet tall. I like to say it's the quinceanera effect. There's a groundbreaking ceremony, everybody's happy, and then everybody leaves. Well, somebody's gotta do the cleanup. Somebody's gotta clean up that mess. And I'm not saying that we're coming in to clean up the mess, but that's where our workforce division gets engaged. We're talking about supply chain, business retention expansion, workforce and talent. So when the project is here and the announcement is made, That's where we come in full force. We have to make sure that these companies have everything at their disposition to succeed. I call it fostering the entry of the business to market, in this case, to the Brownsville market. Simultaneously, you'll see one of the positions, which is director of government affairs. We're working the legislature. That's incentives programs, funding, and policy as well. Things in point today, we had a Texas commissioner for transportation, Alex Mead, he hosted them today. And SpaceX was there, Saronic, LNG, Linde. America first refinery, car power ship, and then some of the other suppliers and some of the other companies that we recruited as of late. That's up to about 16, 17 companies that were there specifically to talk about community challenges as they pertain to infrastructure. That's where that policy comes into play. So I'd like to say is then the final leg of this is big fish draws other big fish.

That's when we promote.

And we promote heavily, which means we advocate for Brownsville. And we do this to now benefit from the supply chain following these larger enterprises. And look, at the end of the day, we're on the hook for 700 plus acres that we have to fill at the Greater Brownsville Tech Park, which, no pun intended, is a landing pad for suppliers for SpaceX, for Saronic, so on and so forth. So again, these are the processes of the Greater Brownsville ADC. They're very well defined. And our staff, it's a very young staff, and they're very tuned in to what they need to do. And as I mentioned last time, this is a team that does not, and they're all from Brownsville. This is a team that does not sit behind a computer and answer calls waiting for the phone to ring. This is a team that's being trained to go out there and recruit companies. And I'd like to say that they've got the discipline to execute because we are in competition. Economic development is a game. It's a game of winners and losers. Let me rephrase that. It's a game of one winner and a lot of people that, a lot of communities that lose. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the organizational chart and or the budget. Then I can turn it over to Talavalo who can do the deeper dive as far as our budget.

Any questions from the commission? This is a public hearing. Anyone from the audience who would like to participate? Oh, sorry. My bad. I thought Talavalo's presentation was optional. Okay.

Good afternoon Mayor and City Commission. I'm going to dive into the numbers. We're going to start off with an overview of the budget and we'll dive into the details. As mentioned, you do have a budget worksheet with every single line item included. This will just be a summary of that information. For fiscal year 2027, we're proposing $22.2 million in total revenues and $17 million in expenditures. The operating budget is balanced at $9 million, with operating revenues fully supporting operating expenditures. For capital activity, we are budgeting $13.2 million in land sale proceeds, and that is coming from Phase 1 of the Greater Brazile Tech District. Of those proceeds, we are reinvesting $8 million towards the development of Phase 2, which covers approximately 186 acres, and that results in a net positive capital impact of $5.2 million towards the fund balance. So that takes the projected beginning fund balance of $11.6 million at the beginning of the fiscal year to approximately $16.8 million at year end. This slide here is a visual of where our recurring revenues are coming from and how that money is being allocated with an operating budget. So our money is mainly coming from sales tax at 93% and 7% from interest income. For expenditures, 52% is being allocated towards operating. 16% is being allocated towards job creation incentives, another 16% to the City of Brownsville for airport development contributions, 12% in workforce initiatives, and lastly, 4% in strategic initiatives. Lastly, this slide here is a comparison between the current fiscal year's adopted budget and the proposed budget for 2027. The proposed operating revenues are $9 million, which is a decrease of $200,000 in comparison to the current fiscal year. That decrease is mainly being driven by a 50% reduction in interest income. As we are investing into the Tech District, we naturally have less funds to invest. meaning less interest is being earned throughout the fiscal year for sales tax we are budgeting 8.4 million an increase of five percent in comparison to the eight million that was budgeted for the current fiscal year for context we are currently on pace to collect 8.26 million in the current fiscal year for total operating expenditures we are proposing 9 million with which translates to a 1.4 million dollar increase in comparison to the current fiscal year operating costs are increasing by 723 000 primarily driven by an increase in personal services and benefits contractual commitments are increasing by 1.7 million with 1.2 million of that increase coming from job creation incentives and half million coming from an increase to the city of brownsville contributions for airport development lastly workforce initiatives see a slight increase of fifty thousand dollars as we continue supporting workforce needs and other strategic initiatives see a decrease of a million dollars overall the operating budget is balanced at 9 million as mentioned on the first slide we are budgeting for 13.2 million coming in for from land sale proceeds from the tech district a million is being reinvested for phase two that leaves a net surplus of 5.2 million for the fiscal year 2027 budget that concludes the presentation we'll be happy to answer any questions or take any feedback

I have a question. And this question comes from also not just observing, you know, as a commissioner, but also being close to the organization, and seeing the operations, you know, when we used to hire third parties to come in and do a lot of the work that we want at the EDC. And what I've seen is, is the is a pivot to be more in house and tailored towards Brownsville. And I think that's a big win for Brownsville. when we develop our own kind of strategies and initiatives, it can get really hard sometimes when we have to contract out. So for us, I just want to highlight that from the organization that I have seen that it really does make a difference when we are able to have in-house and that quick turnaround, like you said, there's the process that we're building. So I just want to give you all kudos for that.

I want to congratulate you all. as in the last past six months, I've been able to work more with you all and get to know exactly what you all do. And I'm very proud of your office and what you all have done for Brownsville and what you all are bringing to Brownsville. I was honored to go on a trip to go look for some commercial realtors. to come to Brownsville. And sometimes you get to know your partners when you travel with them. And they were very professional. Thank you for everything you do for Brownsville and a great job that you're doing. I really mean that. And I wish you all the continued success because there's a lot more coming to Brownsville. Thank you, Mr. Salinas and your leadership and the rest of everybody. Please send my regards to the whole team. Thank you, sir.

This is a public comment. If anyone in the audience would like to make a comment regarding this item, please feel free to stand up.

Hello, this is a let me Sanchez again I just want to make it clear that. I know you say that you advocate for bronzel and not all the citizens of bronzel particularly I think. These type of businesses that we attract need more transparency, I think we need to look into what is actually going to benefit our Community and how we're actually going to attract jobs. that really impact our community, not data centers that only bring 15 to 20 jobs. This is not a game of winners and losers, because at the end of the day, I think most of us, the residents, we're the ones that end up in losing game. So I feel that we need to really make it clear. There is a room full of people here today. that we're able to speak and there's thousands of residents out there that cannot come forward like we have and I really need really feel that you need to take into consideration some of these businesses while some might be great I don't doubt that I'm not against growth I'm not against economic development I feel great things are happening from before bronzo I feel that we we are at a region that um is prime for a lot of these businesses but we need to attract the right businesses the ones that are not going to impact our water our electricity our resources so by all that I just say this just take into account the people that showed up today we have a voice and remember you have a lot of people that were in this room today that have an impact on where you be the next election as well. And I do want to give you props for everything you bring to Bronzo. I've seen a lot of good businesses come from it, but I feel that there's some businesses that need that extra due diligence and they really need to be taken into executive session or further investigation before they really get brought up to the table and approved. So what I'm asking for you today is that you do that, that any new business that gets attracted to Brownsville gets that extra look at and that we don't beg for business. Because, like I said, we're at a prime region where I think we can attract the right businesses, not just any business, because we're trying to get the big fish. Like, in your own words, we don't want every big fish. That's not right for us. Thank you.

One else. Questions or comments from the commission?

I just have a couple questions. First of all, echoing everybody's congratulations and job well done. What's the contingency if the the sale, like the money coming in, is delayed.

Sure. There's two pivots there. It's either pausing development until that phase one lots are sold, right, or either take out from the fund balance to fund the continued development.

It's the two pivots to that situation. OK. I just want to make sure that there's, I mean, I'm sure you thought of it. I just want to make sure it's public.

I move to close public hearing.

I've got a first from Commissioner Martinez to close public hearing.

Second.

And a second from Commissioner Villarreal. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

Move to approve. Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Martinez and a second from Commissioner Villarreal to approve the proposed budget for GBEDC for 2026-27. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

Okay. It carries seven to zero. Moving on to the public hearing number four.

Commissioner Macias is in here just for the record.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Six to zero, one absent. Thank you for that. Item number four is a public hearing in action on the first reading on ordinance number of 2026-1820 of the City of Brownsville to adopt the fiscal year 2027 annual budget. This does require a roll call for adoption. Turn it over to the staff.

Even use financial services department here we have our proposed budget for the fiscal year 2027 and before we go through that, I don't want to disclose it. It is the same budget we presented at our last workshop. And before we review the numbers again, I just wanted to highlight. Some of the milestones we hit through our budget process and something I did forget to include was the community engagement meetings before we even started back in February. We held two meetings, one at the event center and one at the public library after five open to the public where they could come and attend and have a discussion with the city manager where the taxes were explained where they go, what they're used for. So we had that as well. And then starting in March, we brought our financial forecast review and update to our policies before city commission. We disclosed that, talked about the changes, and then we established our first budget committee meeting, which included three commissioners, Commissioner Villarreal, Commissioner Galanski, and Commissioner Cardenas. And at that meeting, we discussed the budget process and again, reviewed our policy statements that we were going to adhere to throughout this process. And while that was going on, we also had the departments completing their planning process and submitting their final budget requests that should have been in alignment with the city's overall goals. Then we had our second budget committee meeting where we discussed the fiscal year 2027 revenue projections and expenditure projections, the key budget items, as well as our capital improvement plan on the items for that year. um shortly after that we had the city manager met with each department reviewed their one-on-one or had one-on-ones to discuss their budget requests confirm their alignment and make the final selections as you know we did have over 10 million requests and we could only fund 2.2 million so we had to be selective in what furthers the city's goals the most out of all those requests Then we had our first budget workshop that was held at the event center for increased accessibility to the public. And we reviewed the budget process, the legislation that impacts us, as well as we reviewed the department departmental operations again to show where these tech dollars are going. On June 30th, we had our budget draft filed, which was also the same one we presented. at our second budget workshop, and that was made available, was followed by the city secretary and made available for anyone to download on our city's website. At the second budget workshop, we discussed the projected budget or proposed budget. We discussed the highlights that included the second phase of the compensation plan, operational enhancements, and the funding of the collective bargaining agreements with the police and fire department. We also reviewed in depth or capital improvement program and provided detailed updates on the streets and trails and other projects that are part of that program. And then we did for this meeting all the required advertisements as well as additional advertisements on social media as we've noticed that's where people tend to receive their news. So a brief recap on on some of the key key revenue sources for the general fund. We have our sales tax. Here we show the trend since 2019. It's been increasing year over year, but we do have variations on how much it increases, right? And that's denoted by the pink colored bar towards the bottom. So but we do have year over year growth. We're expecting over 5% in sales tech growth by the end of this fiscal year. Here is a breakdown of our property tax rate history from our total tax rate. In the bar graph, you'll see in blue the debt service and in the pink the operating that goes towards our general fund operations. And the line above that denotes how much it decreased from year to year. And since 2020, we've had a 13.86% decrease in our tax rate. In 2026, we maintain the same tax rate as 2025, the previous year. And that brought us to our options for fiscal year 2027, right? We discussed the voter approval tax rate. We do have the option of increasing to 61 cents. But we went ahead, we prepared our proposed budget with the current tax rate. That's the one we're proposing to adopt for the fiscal year 2027, maintaining the current tax rate of 0.603504. And what that looks like to taxpayers, this is an impact statement that shows the median values for the city of Brownsville as well as the average taxable values for the city of Brownsville. So if you look at the median value, the first line shows the current tax rate for this current year, and then the proposed rate keeps the same tax rate, but you'll notice that we do have a valuation increase of about 15,000 or 8%. So there is an increase, even though we keep the same tax rate, they will end up having to pay a little bit more. So with that, we look at our general fund revenues. These are the same ones we presented last time. On franchise fees, we had that variance there. It's due to the franchise fees being allocated to the landfill, to extending the life of the landfill related to the recycling. Franchise fees, our property taxes are increasing due to valuation increases and additions to the tax roll. Sales tax is increasing about a million dollars. We had some other minor adjustments throughout the accounts. The other one I wanted to note was the intergovernmental, which is our grants revenues. We created a separate fund for state and federal grants, and that's going to allow us to adjust should there be any government shutdown or reversals on federal policies towards certain grants. We'll be able to identify who and what would be impacted exactly and give us a chance to pivot more accurately. On the expenditure side, we had our biggest increase compared to the previous year, being the personnel costs. And that's related to the second phase of the compensation plan. We did have a decrease in contingency by 2 million, and that's mostly related to items that were considered a contingency last year being reclassified to a proper recurring classification for future years. And we did have an increase in our transfers out that go to support our special revenue and enterprise funds. And here is a look at the transfer activity that we're going to budget for next year. On transferring in or coming into the general fund, we're maintaining the same budget for the bridge fund, slight increase from the landfill fund from 9.6 million to 10 million, and we're keeping the same budgeted amount that we received from PUB at 10.2 million. On the transfers out, we have our tourist fund, our tax increment reinvestment zones. The property values have increased there, so the amount due to them has increased slightly up from 600,000 from 380,000. Street maintenance fund has increased about 350,000 compared to last year. The airport fund went up about 500,000 due to operational cost increases. The motor vehicle parking system, which functions as our downtown services fund, went up slightly. We did have some decreases in three of the parks funds, the event center, the Brownsville Golf and Recreation, and the Brownsville Sports Park fund. And that's due to their own revenues being sufficient or very increased. And the amount we have to transfer has reduced. It's been offset by their generated revenues. Then we also increased the public transit fund by 500,000 as well. Well, our internal services funds and special revenue funds, the facility and information technology, they both service all the departments for the city. Their budget had to increase about $1.1 million. This year, and the information technology fund increased about 863,000. For the special revenue funds, we were able to increase the conventional tourism fund by about 77,000. The street maintenance fund by nearly 400,000, and then we did establish a budget for the stormwater. Drainage maintenance fund, and this is what we're anticipating to collect from a 5 dollar residential unit. Uh, utility fee that's replacing the that's currently at 6 dollars and 25 cents. For enterprise funds for the airport, we're budgeting. about an 800,000 increase, 6.2 million up from 5.4. The Bridge Fund, a slight increase there. Another slight increase for the Motor Vehicle Parking Fund and the Events Center. Public Transit is only about 180,000 increase. The largest increase was the landfill at 1.1 million. We had some minor adjustments for the Golf Center and Sports Park. And then the one I want to highlight is the Fiber Fund. We are budgeting $2.6 million. That is the cost of the professional services maintenance agreement to maintain the Middlemire Fiber Fund, as well as what we would need to raise to offset that cost in revenues from lease agreements. That is the summary of proposed budget. I'd again like to thank our committee members that contributed to the budget process, and I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have.

anyone in the commission have any questions or comments and also this is a public hearing anyone in the audience who would like to speak on this issue please feel free to take um the stand go to the podium and you have three minutes to make a comment i'll move to close public hearing i've got a first from commissioner martinez and the second from commissioner villarreal to close the public hearing all those in favor aye aye Any opposed? Motion carries. I'll entertain a motion to adopt the proposed budget.

Move to approve.

Second. I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Martinez. All those in favor?

I will do a roll call for this item. I'll start with Commissioner Cardenas. Aye. Commissioner De Leon.

Aye.

Uh, Mayor Pro Tem Galanski? Aye. Commissioner Villarreal? Aye. Commissioner Macias? Aye. And Commissioner Martinez?

Aye.

And Mayor Cowan?

Aye.

It passes seven to zero.

Mayor and Commissioner, I want to thank you for all of your hard work and leadership on this budget. I think it addresses your strategies and your goals for moving Brownsville forward. want to thank stephen and the finance department staff they put in a lot of long hours every summer when they're working on the budget and they get no recognition for it at all so i want you to know that we see you and we appreciate the work that you do very much i want to thank all the department heads who put a lot of thought and effort into their requests and i thank them for their patience because they're not getting everything they asked for they got a little bit of something and we hope that it will do a lot to improve Brownsville, improve our services for our community and continue to make Brownsville a great place to live, work and play. So thank you all for your help. Definitely was a team effort.

The next public hearing item is number five is the public hearing and action on the first reading on ordinance number 2026-1821 to ratify the fiscal year of a 2027 budget that will raise more total property taxes than last year's budget. We'll turn it over to staff.

So the Texas local government code requires us to adopt, acknowledge the increase in the budget and then a separate acknowledgement for the tax rate. So this is to acknowledge the dollar amounts That will be raised compared to the prior year. So the maintenance and operation increase will be about 1.8Million and then that service. Increase will be about 1.2Million.

And I just want to, because this, I think the wording here always creates a misperception. We're not raising the tax rate, right? It just, the way it's worded is we're going to end up with more revenue because there's more development, there's people buying more.

Yes, valuations went up as well as there was new properties added to the tax roll, so we have expansion through those methods as well.

And I want to add a little bit to that. That's absolutely correct. And not everybody, some people's tax bills will be exactly the same because their value didn't change. Some will go up because their value went up. Some will go down because they protested and their value went down because the tax rate stayed the same. But I think the primary driver of this is new construction. We've seen a number of new apartment buildings. We've seen a lot of commercial development. And I think our permits, our permit data will substantiate that. So I appreciate you bringing that up. wording and create an impression that may or may not be accurate but it is what we're required to do by texas state code and we follow the law and we are transparent about it so thank you for that comment so this is also a public hearing anyone who would wish to speak on this matter please feel free to take the podium and you have three minutes to make a comment

move to close second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Macias to close the public hearing. All those in favor.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

This I don't know if staff has their motion, but this requires a specific motion. That's the next one that requires the language. Well, the ratification, um, you have to read the

percent increase that's the one on the text i can go forward do it if you wanna can i go for it so this is to ratify the tax rate where we actually discuss the tax rates and this one does have that required language by the state so they have to read this to move to approve it sorry i'm getting a little bit ahead um well for this one for for the current one which is number five uh

to ratify the fiscal year 2027 budget that will raise more total property taxes than last year's budget. Ultimately, we need a roll call vote, correct?

Yes.

We still need to do a motion.

Is there a motion? Are you in favor or not?

Motion. Move to approve.

Motion to approve to ratify.

Second. I've got a first from Commissioner Cardenas and a second from Commissioner Villarreal. Moving to approve.

The proposed? Yes. And then we'll do the roll call starting with Commissioner Martinez.

Aye.

Commissioner Macias. Aye. Commissioner Villarreal.

Aye.

Commissioner Galanski. Aye. Commissioner De Leon. And Commissioner Cardenas.

Aye.

And Mayor Cowan.

Aye.

It passes seven to zero to ratify the budget. Moving on to the public hearing number six is a public hearing in action on the first reading on onus number 2026-1822, a levy in the ad valorem taxes for the tax year 2026 for the use and the support of the municipal government of the city of Brownsville for the fiscal year 2027, providing for the interest in seeking funds for the fiscal year 2027 for the city of Brownsville, Texas, for the general obligation debt. Turn it over to staff. This does also require a roll call for the adoption.

So this one is the disclosure on what the tax rate is that was used to establish our fiscal year 2027 budget. And we show our current tax rate of 60 cents, the voter approval tax rate, which was calculated by the state's requirements And we're allowed to go up to that, which would have been a 1.65% increase in the rate, but we are keeping the rate the same. The proposed rate proposed budget is based on the current tax rate of 0.603504 and below that you can see the breakdown between the debt component and the maintenance and operations for the general fund. Well, then matter together as up to the 0.603504. And this is the item that does require, uh. certain language to disclose that even though we're keeping the same tax rate, property values did increase. So on average, most people end up paying 8% more.

Um, any questions or comments? This is also a public hearing. Anyone in the audience who would like to speak to this matter, please feel free to take to the stand, and you have three minutes to make a comment.

Move to close. Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Cardenas and a second from Commissioner Villarreal to close the public hearing. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries in the public hearings closed. Can you please explain to I think we need to emphasize this one really, why then it says here in the language that we're increasing the property tax rate, even though we we just agreed we were not.

Well, the language is effectively an 8% increase. So even though the tax rate stays the same, there's a 0% increase in the tax rate. But property values did increase by 15,000, which is approximately an 8% increase. So even though the tax rate stays the same because the property value went up, they will end up paying a little bit more, 8% more.

But not all properties went up.

Just on average. Exactly. Again, this is just the language we're required to follow for state law.

This is confusing. Agreed. If it confuses me, imagine how many... It confuses me, and I've been doing it for 40 years. That's why I'm glad Commissioner Gronstein brought it up, because I... It says 0%, and then here it says something different. I know.

This is also a perfect opportunity to remind people that that's why they should protest their appraisal values when they have the opportunity to.

And I would note that at our one city fair this year, we had somebody from the appraisal district at that fair representing, and they brought packets for people who wanted to protest their votes. We have no problem with that or protest their appraisal. We have no problem with that. So definitely take advantage of every opportunity you have. If you haven't made any improvements to your property, you should take a shot at that because they'll work with you. If you make a good argument, they'll take that preliminary appraisal and they'll reduce it. So I strongly encourage everybody to take advantage of that opportunity.

I will reiterate that we're not increasing the property tax, but I will move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.603504, which is effectively an 8.03% increase in the tax rate. Do I have a second second? I have a second from Commissioner Martinez. All those in favor.

Oh, this is a.

Sorry, don't hear.

Yes, it's a real power right? OK, we'll start with Mayor Cowan. I he raised his hand at Commissioner Villarreal.

All right.

Commissioner Galanski, I. Commissioner Martinez, Commissioner Macias, I, Commissioner de Leon. Commissioner Cardenas?

Aye.

It passes seven to zero.

Can we can we attempt Mayor Cowan's vote again?

Aye. Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to the public hearing number seven. Is the public hearing in action on the first reading on onus number 2026-1817 to adopt the city of Brownsville's downtown Renaissance master plan. Turn it over to the planning team.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Commissioners. My name is Daniel Leal, Director of Planning and Redevelopment Services with City of Brownsville. I want to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for your time, leadership, and unwavering support throughout this process of developing the Downtown Renaissance Master Plan. I truly believe that August 18, 2026 marks a historic milestone for Downtown Brownsville with the adoption of this plan. the downtown renaissance master plan is not just another plan it's a testament to the city commission's vision and commitment to brunsville's future and to the heart of the city that the downtown our downtown represents For the first time, we have a well-structured, coordinated roadmap that moves us from current momentum to more meaningful action. It's ambitious, but it's still grounded in reality. It contains ideas that seem far-fetching at first sight, but even those are yet anchored on realistic implementation steps. As we'll see through today's presentation, this is not, where is the presentation? No, these are selling cases. If I may.

If we can move on to the next item as we are gathering to pull it up.

as we're doing that as we'll go through today's presentation every recommendation is shaped by Community input practical needs and a genuine spirit of collaboration this is one city in action and we'll highlight how that spirit carries through the plan's engagement strategies and implementation phases and I do need a presentation

which one's this one if you can get to the next one do you all want to jump to eight and we come back or are you almost ready yeah if you don't mind let's jump okay and we'll come back to number seven when it's up we'll jump back okay thank you um item number eight There's a public hearing in action on the first reading. I'm on ordinance number 235-2026-018 to reason for the agriculture to the residential single family to allow a single family residential subdivision for all of the summer lakes of a subdivision phase four Cameron County, Texas, located at Summer Hill Boulevard, Brownsville, Texas 78520 as shown in exhibit a district four.

Good evening, commissioners. Carlos Guerra with the city's planning and redevelopment services department. We've got a couple rezoning cases for you all today. This first case is located on Summerhill Boulevard. The request is to rezone from agriculture to residential single family for the continuation of a residential subdivision. As required by state law, we posted a notice of public hearing just detailing the meeting events and inviting the public out. We also posted a physical sign on the property. We sent out 47 mail outs to property owners within a 200 foot radius and we received zero written opposition to the request. Looking at the zoning map, this area to the north is zoned residential single family and is developed with single family homes. The northern portion is Summer Lakes phase two and three. So this is essentially just a continuation of the subdivision to the north. The areas to the north and east are single family developments. To the east is the Resaca, Across that Osaka is another single family zone and then the area to the West is outside the city limits area to the South is owned agriculture. Summerhill Boulevard is a collector street with an 80 foot right away. And as you can see from this aerial image, it's, you know, again, you know, just a continuation of the development pattern that you've seen to the north. This, the subject property is located within the emerging city West district, which should be predominantly residential consisting of single family homes. So this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and the city's future land use plan as well as the development pattern in the area. So staff is recommending approval of the request to rezone from agriculture to residential single family. We took this before the planning and zoning commission, and they also voted with staff's recommendation to approve the rezoning request.

So this is a public hearing. Is there anyone here in the audience who would like to speak to this matter? If so, please feel free to take this podium, and you have three minutes to make a comment.

Seeing none.

Any questions or comments?

I move to close public hearing. Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Martinez and a second from Commissioner Marcias to close the public hearing. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Carry six to zero. Villarreal is absent.

Move to approve.

Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Martinez and a second from Commissioner Marcias to approve the requested rezoning. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

It carries six to zero. Commissioner Villarreal is absent on this item. We will move on to number nine as the presentation is still uploading. Ms. the public hearing and action on the first reading among ordinance number 235-2026-903S to request a specific use permit in a commercial corridor zoning district to allow a commercial plaza and establish the reduced setbacks for lots 16, 17, and 18 block one, Narahara, Avista Subdivision, Cameron County, Texas, located 9935 Narajo Road, Brownsville, Texas, 78521, as shown in Exhibit A, located in District 3.

Thank you. As mentioned, this is a special use permit request at the current zoning for this property fronting Naranjo Road. The zoning there is Commercial Corridor. And the proposed development is a small commercial Plaza building what this is essentially approving our specific reductions in the setbacks required on the current zoning designation. We comply with state law in terms of public hearing notices to the adjacent property owners. We posted a physical sign at the property to let property owners there know about this meeting and the one at the Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this month. We sent out 13 mail outs to the adjacent property owners within the required buffer and received zero written oppositions. This is the zoning map reflecting Zoning designations in the vicinity, as we could see, there is a good mix of zoning districts, including corridor commercial on the west and east of this property. There is also residential transition districts on the north and south, and an established R1 single-family residential district on the far east of this property or vicinity. This is an aerial map showing the existing development here, as we can see. Again, there is a mix of single-family residential structures, small commercial buildings, and undeveloped land. And this property is, again, fronting Naranjo Road, otherwise known as Anuca Street as you proceed west of the property. And according to our thoroughfare plan, it requires a 110-foot right-of-way dedication, which isn't currently physically there. due to planned expansions of this road where this property is fronting we are proposing this or the applicant has applied for a special use permit request that would essentially provide more a better use of that land noted here on this site plan that's being reflected that blue marker indicating the 55 foot Um, measurement would be where the new property line would begin once once a dedication is made to that, uh, fronting road and Nuka Road or Naranjo Road. And the measurement of the required minimum setback would begin on that new property line 25 feet in to the property. So we are proposing or the applicant is proposing that a front setback dedication be reduced so that he could accommodate 2 parking spots. and the required trash enclosure at this property for the use of that commercial plaza. Our UDC also requires that they dedicate a 15 foot separation anytime a commercial project is adjacent to a residential property. And that is the case at this property where there is a residential use on the west boundary of this property. So if this applicant were to comply with the minimum requirements for the setback, he would be restricted not only on the front portion of this property, but also on the west side when it comes to enforcing that site setback requirement. This SUP would make it to where they could dedicate those two temporary parking spots on the front. temporarily place that trash enclosure also in the front and also provide a minimum 5 foot side setback separation facing on the property line that faces the residential use. The property owner, as we could see on the site plan is instead of dedicating 5 feet is dedicating 7.5 feet of separation to the residential property on the West. When we made our analysis, we found this request to be consistent with our existing comp plan and our future land use plan staff recommends approval of the request to allow the reduction of that front yard setback to allow 5 foot setback along the lateral and rear property lines and to allow 2 parking spaces to exist in the front yard until the expansion improvements of road take place. And finally, To also approve that waste enclosure temporarily on the front that will later be relocated once the actual physical expansion is brought into the road. Our planning and zoning commission also recommended approval at their meeting earlier this month.

Or whoever's in charge scroll back to the area. Yeah.

Yes, ma'am.

So. Do we have a protected date by when the expansion would occur? Because it's a city road, right?

Yes, we do not have an exact date on this, but it is a planned expansion.

Good evening, mayor commissioners. So the expansion, we do not have an established data would be a question that we would defer to the engineering and public works team. However, it is part of the thoroughfare plan as a reminder. The thoroughfare plan is basically a projection of road expansions all the way to the year 2050. so it can happen anytime between that period. Um, right now, in the near future, it's not 1 of the roads that is planned for expansion. Um, however, because this expansion will eventually be required. This, uh, or these conditions are being established. To assist the developer and being able to fulfill the goal of building on the property and as a way to mitigate the amount of land that will be lost in that dedication.

So in the future, when it did happen, there would be parking in the front or would it be in the back?

The parking will be in the front. Yes.

So thank you. Anyone else have any questions or comments? Also, this is a public hearing. If anyone present would like to comment or ask a question about this item, please feel free to come to the podium and make your comment. You have three minutes. seeing no one i've got a first from commissioner and a second from commissioner messias to close the public hearing all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries five to zero commissioner villarreal and cardenas is absent second i've got a first from commissioner de leon and a second from commissioner messias to approve the proposed um changes um all those in favor Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. It carries five to zero. Villarreal and Cardenas is absent. We will jump back to public hearing number seven. Sorry about the technical difficulties on that. We'll go back to the public hearing in action on the first reading on ordinance number 2026-1817 to adopt the Downtown of Renaissance Master Plan. Take it over.

There you go. good evening again so this is the project scope and timeline this plan was carefully structured as a 12-month process beginning with kickoff data review and community engagement ensuring that every phase was inclusive and transparent the timeline matters it reflects multiple rounds of input and multiple voices being heard we listen we revised we build a plan that's ready for real world implementation Later in the presentation you'll see how this collaborative approach led to actionable strategies and a framework that empowers departments and stakeholders to move forward together. From a purely break management standpoint, which is a staffs responsibility i'm happy to report that this plan has been completed within time and within the original budget, no single dollar has been added in this process. which I'd like to thank both Alan Garcés, who acted as the city's project manager, and Caitlin Admire, acting as Fritz and Nico's project lead, for their clear and candid communications throughout the process that minimized any misunderstanding and potential budget or delivery time issues. What the plan was asked to do it was a number of things. There were many expectations around downtown. So we gladly took them all in and developed this plan off of those very expectations. More specifically, building on recent downtown momentum and public and private investment, supporting preservation while encouraging reinvestment and adaptive reuse create a shared vision for the community for our downtown strengthen downtown housing and mixed-use development opportunities and identify priorities that make downtown more walkable safe shaded active and welcoming by doing all of that we will create an implementation framework that helps the city move forward from planning to action with no further delay again katelyn and mark and alan garces will walk you through the highlights only of this about 200 pages document thank you mayor commissioners thank you so much for taking the time to listen to us i know it's been a long meeting but thank you i want to um

Give us a shout out to our staff, the planning department and others that helped us throughout this entire process. It's been a great year as someone who's browser born and raised and someone who really cares about downtown. I'm very excited to share what we've discovered and what our community has been saying. So I just quickly want to reinforce. I know we talk about 1 city here a lot and want to mention the people. The philosophy, right? The people purpose and projects and mentioned that we took this as a community led initiative, right? So that's why people come first. This was a big initiative that we led, but it was definitely worked alongside our downtown business owners, our property owners, people who had stake in our downtown who actually cared about downtown and took the time to meet with us and, you know, give us your feedback on what things that we're doing right on things that we should be working on. So. I just wanted to to let you know that this was an initiative that. Meant a great deal to our community members in the downtown area. So I just want to give a quick engagement of what we did this past year. Um, it was an intentional approach that was, you know. Meant to be visible and accessible. Yes, we had our typical town hall meetings, but we also went to where the people were already were gathering. We went to 1st, Friday we went to. um the zoo we met with our youth advisory council so we just wanted to make sure that we had a wide different audience to capture their feedback right not just those that were in one particular sector of our community right so because downtown is for everyone we want to make sure that we got feedback from different members of our community different audiences so this is just a snapshot of the The engagement opportunities that I just mentioned, I don't want to go into detail of every location, but you see that some of the images where we had different workshop, we had different opportunities to engage a public and I'm just. Just excited about this document, because people actually took the time when they were already doing something else to meet with us and either give us their feedback or write some notes, put a dot on the board. I mean, people are really passionate about downtown and you can see, you know, through the effort that we've had, we also had. opportunities for the people to engage through the public document draft that was available online this past month, and I'll briefly touch on that, but just want to show that this was an effort that was led by our community, as I mentioned earlier, where we had different types of workshops. I think the takeaway here is that the plan reflects multiple audiences, whether it's families, business owners, meeting with UTRGV, TSC, like we did a few times, and just overall residents of our downtown area as well. So here's some of the reoccurring themes that we were seeing throughout the downtown. The feedback shows that people are proud of downtown. They're part of the culture, the identity, but they also want basic comfort, right? Focus on things that are actionable items, right? Focus on basic comfort, cleanliness, safety improvements. The reoccurring themes were shade, lighting, cleanliness, and housing. A simple way to say it is people love their downtown, but they want, they want it to be easier, safer, and more comfortable to use on an everyday basis. So I will not mention that the reoccurring themes when it comes to, for example, walkability or connectivity, um, they have like subsections where we can talk about like a parking garage, right? Or we talk about the trolley. So those are some things that, you know, kind of fit within those walkability connectivities that we are already actively working on. this is just a snapshot and i know we provided some of that feedback that was given by the community once the public draft was made available to the community we posted on social media we also made it available uh through the continue the website that we've been using the entire time we also let people know during friday with the city about two three weeks ago that this was already available for review uh we had that public draft available for a month from june 23rd to july 23rd available and those that responded had an overall 86 percent in support of the downtown plan to move forward and be adopted. I just want to show that where that shows a number where 86% of those who reviewed the public draft were in agreement that the plan should be adopted as mentioned. So here's what we discovered. After listening to the community and reviewing conditions, we want to find projects that we're standing now. Yes, we want to focus on basic necessities and cleanliness. We want to see other items that we needed to focus on. Right. So the next few slides are going to learn what the team discovered. So downtown has momentum, but it lacks focus. We see the momentum happening. We see the road closures. We see the activity that's happening in our alleys. We see the scaffolding. But we also want to know that we need to have some sort of growth in a cohesive manner. We want to make sure that when people and developers and people want to open up shop in downtown, that they know what the city is looking for. They want to be able to figure out who to go to for help to make things happen in a cohesive manner, as I mentioned. The challenge is that the momentum needs a little bit more focus instead of just feeling a little bit more scattered. You want to hodgepodge projects here and there. We want the downtown to feel as a whole. Right this plan will help coordinate investments to public improvements, private projects and programming towards the same visions to the same goal. So, downtown has a lot to offer, but it lacks connectivity. So we have many great destinations, right? We have stuff happening in the core. We also have things on the in the zoo and we have the midi district and the mural that they're doing and different things that they're activating. We also are going with the cannery as, as I mentioned earlier, but the idea here is that. It feels a little scattered. So how can we get people to move around downtown? Maybe park once if they like to, and then maybe go to the zoo, grab lunch or dinner at the, at the downtown core. So just be able to move a little bit easier without having to move in their vehicle so much. That's a lot what we were hearing. So how can we do that? Obviously, we talked about the parking garage, but then maybe find different things to where we can have a different type of shuttle circular. The trolley keeps coming up. So, things like that to how we can have experiences downtown feel a bit more connected, right? Improving our, our connections are way finding shades a big deal. And we talked about that shortly, but the idea is to get people to park once if they choose to, they can also just leave that car there and move around downtown just a little bit easier. So, downtown is strong, but lacks living opportunities. Downtown is strong as an employment government culture visitor district, but it needs more people living here to workshop play need here. So I think what we need to identify is what's what we need in downtown for for. Living purposes. The draft identifies more like real term, near term targets, but it's not something that's going to just blow up overnight. So the intention here is to support adaptive reuse, maybe some infill, find ways to activate the 2nd floor. Now. I will say that the city is also working hand in hand or parallel to this plan, because we are actively working on the housing plan to better figure out how we can support housing in the city as a whole. But there's also going to be a downtown section as well. And I will also say that our church board is looking at ways to maybe possibly look at creating some sort of incentives policy to promote residential living in a downtown area. So that I think the city and the supporting. sectors know that there's downtown that downtown lacks housing so we're finding ways to make that happen proactively so shade is not just beautification it's a core infrastructure and economic development strategy so that also goes into what we talked about earlier where the city's uh downtown area is or was scored about a 73 percent uh good walkability Now, I think what happens is that yes, you can park your vehicle, but it might just feel that much harder or that much more difficult when you have to walk several blocks and it's very hot. So maybe parking your car in one spot maybe at nighttime isn't as bad and having to walk a couple blocks when it is maybe in the summer during the day. So I think it's about promoting our Guidelines are historic guidelines specifically are building codes to allow for this type of built in environment in the downtown to provide shade where we currently lack shade. I think the idea sometimes to provide trees, but then if trees aren't necessarily the best rush, because. that they might not fit, it might be too high, the lack of maintenance, the water. So I think the idea here is figuring out how we can adjust our codes to allow canopy structure colonies to be able to support the shade in the downtown. So last but not least from my part of this presentation is what you're seeing in front of you is a conceptual design of what could happen in the switchyard area. So the switchyard area may be downtown's most notable long-term growth opportunity. This is kind of a blank slate where we can start from scratch, right? Because it's more of an area where it's not in the downtown core, maybe has a little bit more of a different built characteristic than what we're seeing in the downtown area. Well, we are able to work with developers and let them know what we're looking for and what we want to see for that area. Um, we also have, you know. Goals and ideas of what we could see there with working with with working with the rest of trials, possibly talking to developers and property owners, um, in that area of what we could work together on to make, you know, that switch our area a more of a mixed use more of an area where people can be in downtown live downtown. And have a better connection to the area as well. So it's an exciting time. As I mentioned, we definitely wanted to showcase what we've been doing this past year as far as hearing our community, what the plan entails. As Daniel mentioned earlier, this plan is a large document. We want to highlight some of those areas of what we've been doing and what that plan is showing. But we basically are very excited. Caitlin will get into the more details. Aspect of it, and how we can actually implement it. I don't necessarily want this plan as others have mentioned, or about other plans where it just sits on a shelf. We actually are implementing and working on items already working hand in hand. For example, the trash cans talking to be Metro about updating our. Our bus system into working and adjusting until we could be a trolley. So we are already actively working on things as the commissioners where we're also looking at parking garage selection areas. So it's just 1 of those things where we're working already and being proactive versus reactive.

All right, so my section on how the plan delivers, I'm going to try to go through this pretty quickly. I know you guys have a long night still ahead of you. So this section really talks about so what did we actually put in the plan that delivers and all the things that Daniel and Alan just talked about. You guys have been involved in this process throughout the last year, so hopefully none of this is a surprise to you. That document has also been available for six weeks now at this point, so I'm hoping that you guys have looked at it. So all of this is just a quick review summary, and we can, of course, answer any questions you have. So, first, we've got those transformational projects that are three big projects, the Plaza Mayor that is near the cathedral and extends kind of that event and public space adjacent to Market Square. The Adams Street Paseo, which I know we've been talking about for a long time, and you guys have seen those plans and heard about that. And that looks at taking Adam street and turning it into kind of a destination in and of itself. Very pedestrianized still allowing vehicles, but but not focusing on vehicles quite as much. And then, of course, the switch yards. Area that Daniel or Alan just talked about where we would have the trail corridor, potential spring, additional development over there. connecting over to iTech and having that opportunity for future kind of ground up new development. That would be something a little bit different than maybe the infill stuff that you would see in the historic core. There is a chapter on housing strategies. Alan talked about that this was something that came up a lot. Having residents in downtown is really important to creating that thriving downtown environment, 18 hours, seven days a week kind of thing. You gotta have people there on nights as well. So those are residents generally. So the housing strategies chapter provides different ways to incorporate more housing, especially into the downtown core where it's a little bit harder. So things like how do you get around The limitations of upper story activation on some of your historic buildings, how do you these diagrams here are showing different ways of how you could fit infill housing projects into small lots within the downtown core. And then, of course, again, some of that opportunity for ground up larger scale housing in the switch yards. The public realm strategies, this is really kind of the foundation of everything. This looks at the major roadways, major open space, those transformational projects, and some of those major destinations. This is kind of the baseline upon which everything else is built. These are the this is the structure, the framework that is currently in play in our downtown and how we're adding things on top of that. In this chapter, you'll also see the identification of character areas. We've talked about those before that allow for different levels of investment. This is a very large study area, so you've got to be strategic about where you put more dollars and more energy and where maybe you don't have to put quite the same amount of dollars per block. So that's where we get into those character areas. And this is where we also address those really basic things that we were hearing from people that must be addressed in order to have a functioning downtown, the shade, the walkability, the landscaping, the cleanliness, the safety. There is a chapter, a pretty long chapter on mobility, transportation and parking. We heard a lot about all of these things. So this is there's a lot packed into this chapter. It includes parking strategies, including some opportunities for garage locations. The city does have funding that they already have ready to do that first garage. So there's identification of a couple different potential locations for that. Of course, the both vehicular traffic as well as active transportation, so the bikes and pedestrians. So there are streetscape typologies for the primary downtown corridors. As you see here, there's typical street sections recommended for each street, for each of those primary corridors that identify You know, how are we moving cars? How are we moving people? How are we moving bicycles public transit? We heard a lot about a. Former trolley that used to be in the downtown area. So we did look at potential initial routes that a new trolley could take or some other type of public transit should as the city kind of moves forward and looks at options there. And so then the what now? So what happens after we hopefully get this adopted tonight, if that is your wish. The last chapter of this document is implementation and action items. It's a little bit more boring. It's not as flashy. It doesn't have the pretty renderings, but this is really where the rubber meets the road. This is the action plan. 63 action items were identified across all of those different topical chapters that I just talked about. And this is the playbook for the city to move forward into making these things happen. So there's CIP projects, there's enabling actions related to policy and regulations. This is a snip of just what that looks like. So each of those different topics has a set of actions that are, the actions are described, and then there's a timeframe put to them, kind of a short, medium, long-term timeframe There's lead entities and partners identified and just kind of a range of costs, not exact cost estimates, but just like kind of a scale of cost implications for each of those. We did have kind of a fun, interesting exercise on this one, just to kind of show you how your city staff was involved. We had a virtual implementation collaboration meeting with a ton of city staff members. You remember how many people were involved? I think 30 people, 30 staff members from different departments where we talked about each of these action, each of the CIP related action items and had the city staff kind of poke holes in it. tell us if they wanted to add anything to it, tell us if we were missing anything. So we really attempted to get that buy-in from the city staff to make sure that when we hand this to them and say, here's the plan that got adopted, they actually are willing to implement the things that are in there because they were involved in creating those implementation actions. So like I said, there's the near, medium, and long-term implementation action items, and the long-term is our 10-year planning horizon for this plan. In the near term, in the next couple years, you're looking at the easy win, some of those basic comfort and walkability and shade and things like that, parking, some of the things you already have funding for that you can start getting ready to move on now. In the five-year term, these are some things that you need a little bit of time to get in get in shape, get your partners together, have some conversations before you're ready to start really moving. And then the long-term stuff is stuff that the city is going to be kind of supporting or incentivizing or creating the atmosphere for or the environment for, but it's really going to rely on a lot of other partners to get things going too, like the switchyards development, for example. There's going to be a lot of private development. You know, the city's not building all of that, so it's kind of at the whim of the market and the city's going to do what they can to create that environment. But then in the end, you're kind of at the mercy of others to make some of those things happen. Of course, there are some of these big transformational projects that have actions that span across all of these. So the Adams Street Paseo near mid and long term actions to actually see the full thing come to fruition. But you're needing to do things in each of these time frames in order to make it to the end. So those are kind of longer term actions that have something in every time frame. Um, so why does this matter for you guys as the city commission? Um, you know, you charged us with. Doing all those things in the beginning that Daniel talked about 1 of which was advancing a commute was identifying and therefore, and then creating a plan to advance that community's vision for the downtown area, focusing investment where it can really be most effective supporting downtown as both the economic and civic center of the city. Um, and creating a practical path to implementation and so hopefully. You see these four bullets from what we've told you tonight that those are shown in this plan. So with that, happy to take questions or feedback for anyone who's listening who has not had a chance to look at it. You can still see the document. We're not taking comments anymore, but the document is still available on the website.

And is it a final draft or not yet?

This would be the final draft.

Yes. And to that end, I noticed that you did mention the bugan field project from the housing authority. Have they approved? It has everything that they need for their future plan.

Yes. So they, the housing authority actually looked at the plan alongside with us. We've met with them several times. They actually greenlit the language that was on there.

Great. Um, any questions from my fellow city commissioners? This is a public hearing and, um, so anyone in the audience who would like to comment on this item, please feel free to step up to the podium. Growth. So, uh, seeing if there's no, or I've got a 1st from commissioner in a 2nd from.

I think commissioner has a call. Okay.

Yeah, I just have a quick comment. Thank you all so much for all the work that you put into this. I've been to a couple of these presentations. Thank you for going through it again. But also, Alan, great job fielding tough questions, right? I think the community, it's important to always get community feedback. And sometimes they're looking at this for the very first time when you present. And there's a lot of tough questions and, uh, and you and your team and and everybody's done a great job at answering those questions and being very open to to the citizens. Um, I, I feel very confident. In this plan, moving forward, uh, there was feedback, uh, beyond before the presentation, just gathering the data. So, thank you very much for your work and you're in and, uh, in this as well and your team, uh, for being the consultant in this. Um, I, I really feel confident, like I said, even from the youth advisory board, right? Like, from every, yeah, I was sitting there as well and just to get feedback from even young people, um. Out in the public, the, the, the staff of the city of Brownsville, um. Again, just very confident and, uh.

want to fast forward time to to to walk uh the downtown that you guys have laid out for us thank you commissioner appreciate that so i believe i had a first from commissioner de leon in a second from someone to close public hearing second second from commissioner martinez to close public hearing all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries move to approve second um i've got a first from commissioner martinez and a second from commissioner villarreal to approve the downtown master plan um all those in favor right and i just want to make one more comment because you mentioned a lot about housing tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m at the south most library anyone who would like to give input on the brownsville housing master plan there's your opportunity so um on that note all those in favor i think everyone Um, any opposed motion carries carry seven to zero.

Thank you so much. Thank you. And we would jump into the public hearing number 10. Public hearing and action among the first reading among ordinance number 235-2026-904 to resume from the residential single family to the residential suburban to allow an existing duplex subdivision for all of Hidden Meadows subdivision section two in Cameron County, Texas, located at the Hidden Meadows Boulevard in Brownsville, Texas, 78520, as shown in Exhibit 8 in District 4.

Good evening again, Mayor Pro Tem, Commissioners, Carlos Guerra with the city's Planning and Redevelopment Services Department. This request is to rezone a duplex subdivision from residential single family to R2 residential suburban. This property is fronting Hidden Meadows Boulevard. As required by state law, we posted a notice of public hearing detailing the meeting events. We also posted a physical sign on the property. We sent out 126 mail outs to property owners within a 200 foot radius and we received zero written opposition to the request. If you look at this zoning map, you can see it's residential single or zone residential single family to the south and to the west, residential transition to the north and then residential commercial to the west. This request is to rezone this portion of the subdivision to R2 to allow for duplex uses. Currently that entire subdivision with the exception of maybe two vacant lots are duplex uses. We're essentially correcting an issue that was from the previous zoning code. The previous zoning code allowed duplex uses on R1 single family lots that were the size of, that exceeded 6,000 square feet. In this case, these lots, if you look closely, they're about average size 7,800 square feet. So larger lots that can facilitate duplex development Again, that's the only portion that we're requesting to rezone. There's maybe two or three vacant lots total that are left over. The rest are duplex uses. So this is bringing those into compliance, if you will. The property is off Alton Gore Boulevard, which is the primary arterial with 120 foot right of way. Again, this aerial kind of shows the residential trend in all directions. And then the commercial is yet closer to the expressway. This request is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and feature line use plan. Um, it is important to note, though, however, we did get 1 gentleman show up to the planning and zoning commission in opposition to the request. He is actually located outside of the area. That's going to be rezoned, but within the notification boundary, his concern was related to the property tax values. How it might impact his property taxes. Um, again, the subdivision is already developed mostly duplexes with the exception of a couple of lots. staff is recommending approval of the of the rezoning request from r1 to r2 and the planning and zoning commission also voted to approve the the rezoning request as well any questions from my fellow city commissioners this is a public hearing if anyone here would like to comment on this item please feel free to take the podium

move to close public second.

I've got a first from Commissioner got a second from Commissioner must use to close the public hearing. All those in favor. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Move to approve.

I've got six to zero. Sorry, because I don't see mayor. So six to zero, then we'll wait for the motion and approval.

I've got a first from out of the nest and a second from via reality to approve the request for the zoning change. All those in favor. All right. Any opposed?

motion carries carries six to zero one absent mayor cowan we'll jump into public hearing number uh eleven uh public hearing and action on the first reading i'm on ordinance number two three five dash two zero two six dash uh nine zero five to reason from the for the uh from the commercial uh corridor uh to the residential transition r3 to allow an existing a single family of development for an approximately 2.09 acres out of lots one two five six seven and eight block forty out of the share of twenty eight of of the brown ale track coming from a portion of the El Jardin subdivision located at Lester's Drive, Brownsville, Texas, 78521, as shown in Exhibit A, located in District 2.

Thank you. So as mentioned, this is a request to rezone from the current CC commercial corridor into a residential transition district for an existing cluster of single-family uses at that front Lester Drive. We did comply with state law to issue public notices to the adjacent property owners. We posted a physical sign at the property. This 200 foot buffer map shows the 23 mail outs that we sent to property owners in the vicinity and we received zero written opposition to this request. This is the zoning map showing a mix of zoning designations in the area. We can see that there is corridor commercial, there is Arthur residential transition on the south side, and there is also light industrial districts on the north and east of this property. This is an aerial map showing that cluster of single family uses. As we could see, it is very unique. to this area that is mostly surrounded by either undeveloped land, multifamily uses or industrial uses in the area. So it is somehow a cluster of those single family uses that came into this area that established there many decades ago and that we're now trying to basically correct or provide conformancy to our current UDC requirements for single family properties. When we reviewed this request, we did find it consistent with our comprehensive plan and future land use map. We are recommending approval to rezone from the corridor commercial designation to the residential transition. Our three district and our commission board also recommended approval at their meeting earlier this month.

And it is what kind of business is that on the light industrial.

To our knowledge, it is, I think it's a logistics company on the east side, light industrial property.

Any other questions or comments from my fellow city commissioners? Also, this is a public hearing. Anyone in the audience or online who would like to comment on this item, please feel free to speak up.

Move to close public hearing.

Second. I've got a first from Commissioner Cardenas and a second from Commissioner Martinez to close the public hearing. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Six to zero. Mayor is absent.

Move to approve.

Second. I've got a first from Commissioner Cardenas, a second from Commissioner Martinez to approve the requested rezoning. All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries.

Six to zero, Cowan is absent. Moving on to public hearing number 12. There's a public hearing in action on the first reading of an ordinance number 235-2026-012 to resume from the residential single family R1 to the residential transition R3 to allow a townhome development of 3.205 acres out of share for the Espirito Santo Grant, Cameron County, Texas, located at Vasquez Ranch Road, Brownsville, Texas, 78520, as shown in Exhibit A, District 4.

Good evening once again, Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and Commissioners. Uh, this request is well, I'll restart the original request that was brought before the buying department was to rezone this particular area from residential single family to residential transition. To allow a town home development fronting Vasquez French road. As for state law, we have to create a public hearing notice that will be posted on the property physically. This was posted on July 22nd. This is a 200 foot buffer map. There were five mail-offs and zero written opposition. This is a zoning map. What predominates within the surrounding area is agriculture. There's also the extraterritorial jurisdiction to the north and a residential single-family to the south, commercial corridor to the southeast. As shown on the map, Military Highway is a primary arterial requiring 150 feet of right-of-way, and Vasquez Ranch Road is a collector. The base width requirement for this type of thoroughfare is 80 feet. However, because it's rural in nature, the thoroughfare actually calls for 100 feet. So, on the side of the developer, they would have to be dedicating a total of 50 feet for future expansion of roadways. So we provided this map and existing original layout that the developer proposed to provide you context as to what or the reasoning behind their petition. They were originally proposing through this lot layout, 25 single family lots fronting Vasquez Ranch Road. Each lot approximately 5,000 square feet. As you can see on this map or the subdivision plot, each green dot represents a proposed driveway, a proposed access point. As mentioned, Vasquez Ranch Road in the future is to be a rural collector. Uh, this means that they will carry higher amounts of traffic at higher speeds. So, the per the access management section. It does not allow for multiple or continuous access points to be fronting on a collector for safety purposes. What we want to minimize with the access management policy is continuous turning points into properties to where traffic is going to slow down and turn potentially causing a traffic accident or those vehicles that are behind the more transiting through the thoroughfare. So, as mentioned, this was the original petition. The developer then came forth and decided to propose town homes along this same strip of land, the same block. So, instead of having 25, 5,000 square foot lots, they increased it to 50. Lots fronting, which actually. Was a higher issue as per the access management policy. So, as you can see in this diagram, uh, each lot now is shown with a dividing line down the middle. Basically showing 2 lots, uh, generated from 1 and each, uh, purple dot shows. A driveway that would have potentially been proposed fronting Vasquez ranch road. So, going from 25 access points, they went up to 50. Again, this causes a greater problem that would than what they were originally proposing. Therefore, um, the. Planning department with the developer, this case has actually been in our books for quite a while. We've been meeting with the developer to see what options could be given to them to fulfill their project. So we met with them on May 27th. The planning and redevelopment department, engineering and the developer basically discussed their original proposal, which was 25 single family lots. all fronting Vasquez Ranch Road and the revised proposal, which increased the amount of lots fronting this rural collector. We also reviewed the thoroughfare plan and mentioned to them that the existing right-of-way of this roadway is 60 feet, and because the expansion requires a total right-of-way of 100 feet, they would need to dedicate 50 feet on their side. As per thoroughfare policy and because this roadway is a collector, there could be speeds of up to 45 miles per hour and the driveway spacing requirement as per the access management policy is 150 feet of separation between driveways. Based on what they're proposing, the separation of access points would be approximately 25 feet rather than the 150 that is required by code. Therefore, because their proposal was not in compliance with section 3.4.7 of the UDC, which is the access management policy staff proposed an alternative so that they could still fulfill their development. So, alternatively, staff said, well, instead of going all the way towards 3, which is a rather high zoning designation for this area, because our 3 could potentially allow a multi family use. We said, well, or 2 would still let you build townhomes. Additionally, and. The reason behind the. The PD that staff proposed the staff proposes, the plan development district was to be able to condition the case to prohibit independent access along the frontage of us, French road. And also require an internal cross access easement, or what's called a slip street to where there's internal access to all the properties within the entire length of the block. Rather than have individual access to basket French road. So, as shown here on the diagram, um, the line in blue would potentially represent an internal street where. They could use or the residents, whoever purchases these properties would be able to transit, uh, from 1 end of the block towards the end. Uh, or the terminus on not 25, uh, and they can do so without interrupting the flow of traffic on bus, just French road. the lots are are deep enough to do that yes once you take out the 50 feet for the collector road well it wouldn't be so this this proposed layout is already reflecting the right-of-way dedication So the property line that they're showing here is already the established property line after dedication, the internal street, because it's private, it wouldn't be required to be a full cross section of 50 feet. That's typical for a local street. It would be more of a private street, which would range between 24 to 30 feet. Uh, therefore, uh, the request, uh, is consistent with the proposed use is consistent with the existing comprehensive plan and future language plan. However, at the time that this. Was presented at the planning and zoning commission on August 6. Uh, we recommend the denial, uh. Of their original petition, however, we did present the alternative to the planning and zoning commission. Which again would prohibit the independent lot access along the front of the Vasquez ranch road, which is a rural collector requirement or right away dedication of 100 feet. And if we would require an installation of a 2 way cross access easement or a slip street with the minimum width of 30 feet within the interior of the proposed town development, limiting the access to Oscar's branch road. And so this slip street would begin at the beginning of the block and then the other end would be at the terminus to the north. Uh, also we mentioned we're recommending to prohibit parking along this cross access easement. So, to where, let's say we, they, the property owners have visitors, those visiting vehicles won't park. on that roadway uh or that uh cross-access easement that provides access to everyone so that in the event of an emergency uh emergency vehicles could freely transit through that through that path did the developer accept this alternative yes yes so it was presented to the developer they took some time to analyze it but eventually they did Uh, come to the agreement that this would be the best way to fulfill their, uh, development, uh, also, uh, follow staff's recommendation to deny the original petition and go with the alternative that was presented by staff.

Super majority no, no, sir.

This is a public hearing. If there's anyone here to comment on this item, please feel free to take the podium.

Move to close public here.

Second, I've got a first for Commissioner got a mess in a second from Commissioner Macias to close the public hearing all those in favor. Any opposed? Motion carries.

I moved to approve.

Um, and this is to approve the alternative that has been suggested by yes, the recommendation from. So, I've got a 1st from commissioner and I think it was a 2nd from a 1st from and a 2nd from all those in favor.

Any opposed motion carries carry 6 to 0 mayor's absence. Moving on to public hearing number 12. It's a public hearing and action on the first reading. I'm on ordinance number 2026-1818, making findings related to the Madera Espirito Santo Public Improvement District number one, including the visibility of the special supplemental services, the estimated operation and maintenance costs, the boundaries of the district, the method of assessment, and the appropriate and the apportionment of costs between the City of Brownsville and the District. Updating the service and assessment plan SAP that established the Madera Espirito Santo PID number one, levying the assessment and also providing the official notice of the PID update SAP to the Cameron County Clerk as required by Chapter 372, the Texas Local Government Code. This item was tabled from the August 4th City Commission meeting.

Good evening. My name is Dennis Sanchez. I'm here on behalf of Madera. And I'd like to fill you in a little bit about the PID that exists out there. I'm going to show you the PID service area. The portions that I've highlighted in yellow constitute the public amenities that are available at Madera. Most of them, well, phase one consists of three playgrounds, two mailbox clusters and a whole lot of hiking bike trails, about two miles of hiking bike trails. They also have an extensive system of super wide sidewalks that meander along the public rights away. The areas in yellow are highly vegetated and landscaped. And so this pit was created to pay for the maintenance of the landscaping of the highlighted areas. The portion of what I'm showing you now depicts some of the hike and bike trails. And the portion at the top in yellow is also a hike and bike trail. And showing you this, this is another depiction of the amenity areas. And as you can see, that The depiction constitutes both phases one and phases two of Madera. Right now, only phase one is completed. Phase two is anticipated to begin in December of this year. And as you can see, phase two is on the right hand side of the drawing. There are fewer public amenities there. That's going to be significant later on because the cost when phase two is completed will be absorbed by now phases one and two. And so the actual cost of the uh, the kid assessment should go down per lot. The assessment is made on a per lot basis. It's not made on a square foot basis because the at the time that the pit was created, it was anticipated that since everybody going to live out there, they're all going to enjoy the same amenities now in 2026. And this pit started in June of 2025. It's when we have one year under our belt. And I'm showing you what has been marked as exhibit three, four, excuse me. And it actually sets out each amenity area, and how much it costs, how many acres it is, and how much it costs per month to maintain the landscaping The landscaping, this pit covers landscaping, irrigation costs, fertilizing, the security camera system that we have out there, and the electricity to run the security cameras. The budget was extremely correct except for one major issue, and that's the irrigation. When we created Madeira, we spent about $300,000 building a pump station on a resaca about three-quarters of a mile away from phase one. And I was born and raised in Brownsville. We've owned that property for 30 years. But guess what? The resaca went dry. And so therefore, we could no longer pull water out of the resaca to water The, uh, the amenities, so we had to buy water and we still have to buy water from each real Honda water supply corporation, which is the only utility that provides water to the property. So, what went from a 500 dollar a month per month. Water charge ended up being more like 5,000 dollars. Especially during the, uh, the drought that we've had. And that's what's, uh, that pushed the cost of this whole. annual cost up about $30,000. So it went from roughly $171,000 to $200,000 in expense. And that's what we're presenting to you all now is to consider the actual cost of $233,000, which is really $200,000 for actual maintenance expenses. and $33,000 for administrative expenses, which is most of that's being paid to the administrator, which is a company out of Dallas. The landscaping amenities include the parks, the hike and bike trails, And that's it. So what we're asking for approval of is the approval of the supplemental services of $233,498.32, which covers the cost. And it includes the additional water irrigation costs, which is substantial, but that's what it costs. And we're buying, we're buying the water from, as I said, from each real hondo, if and when it ever rains here again, we or if and when we could actually be able to bring water from the Rio Grande River. We do own water rights, but there's no there's no pumping allowed right now in our area. And so we don't have the availability of that water when and if we get it, it should go back down to $500 a month. So it's going to push the cost from what was last year in 2025, 2026, excuse me, of $1,100 per lot to approximately $1,300 per lot, a little bit over $1,300. And that's reality of what we're looking at, and that's what we're asking you all to approve.

I ask how this works because is this for the future development or the existing development?

Pardon me?

Is this, sorry, does this increase tax for future development or even the existing development?

Well, it's going to increase every lot owner out there. There's 187 lot owners right now. It's going to increase it from $1,100 per year to roughly $1,300 per year. when and if we do and when we do complete phase two there's going to be more lots participating in that same general cost because it as i said it's significant because we have much fewer public amenities in phase two so the there's going to be more people spread out more so it should go back down to hopefully we always thought it was going to be about 11 a thousand to eleven hundred dollars a year per lot

I'm going to ask you then, why are we voting on it if you have existing property owners that could decide if they want to have this increase to pay for this?

Well, the PID assessment Because this is a new development, it is something that comes before the city commission for approval. Very similar to a sale a sale had the did have a pit board. And they had recommended the increase or decrease. So, for this instance, and the. Because there is still being under development, and we have different phases coming in. There is not a pit board that has been created yet. So, I mean, the. And even if there was a board, that recommendation would come to city commission anyways, for approval.

Yeah, but I mean, they would take test the winds of residents, right? The property owners.

Right. They would and they were notified we did publish and send out intention to create a board for them. Uh, I don't recall on the document if there was a, uh, a pit board created. I know we had different setups, but not yet.

Right, but there is intention.

It's not 1 right now. No, sir. Yeah, no. So right now it's well, basically we were the kid because we were the sole property on it. So now it was us in the city and now we're starting to sell lots. So there are a lot of owners out there, but we're still out of 187 lots. We still own about 46. the rest of just recently been sold since the beginning of this year.

And you don't have to have a pit board too. So it just depends on how the. Commission wants to administer their pit programs. I think you had a question.

Okay, you just saw from my face or what? Yes. Well, 1st of all, Mr. Sanchez, thank you for sitting here for. four hours and 15 minutes. And thank you very much for sitting patiently. Thank you. I just have a couple of questions. We did have in the last meeting a couple of homeowners that were present. And my questions are just to kind of gain a better understanding. Some of them, they didn't fully understand the PID assessment That was their claim. Obviously, they felt they got a letter in the mail, not knowing at all how clearly they were going to have to be paying for amenities. Some of these owners don't have a home built yet and have a future plan to eventually develop the home. So some of them don't really feel they should be paying for some amenity that they're not using. I don't know if that was clear when they purchased the lot.

Can you walk me through that? Sure. As a matter of law, when they sign the earnest money contract, there's an attachment that they also, everyone signs as part of the contract that's taken to the title company. And so they are told and notified that they are part of the PID. Many people confuse the PID from an HOA. So they're thinking, well, we got it. Because we have, I think, at the minimum HOA, I think it's $400 a year that covers stuff that's not public amenities. But so when they were saying, well, I thought we were paying our HOA. Well, you're paying both. You're paying an HOA and a PID. The PID, though, is the tax. The HOA is an assessment. And the collection procedures for both are very, very different. Because when you pay the tax, I mean, as a tax, it's treated like your home tax. But HOA assessment, if you get delinquent on it, they're extremely difficult to collect. And it makes it difficult to collect the kind of monies that you're going to need in order to maintain what we think is a high-end neighborhood. And we want to keep it that way. So typically what's done at the sales, the title company, is that they explain, they show them, here's what your HOA expense is, here's what your PIT expense is. And the PID and the HOA could go up or down every year depending on the realities of cost. But I can assure you that every contract has been signed and the notification has been given and it's at the title company. Yes, sir. So that's how it works.

Yes, no, perfect. I just wanted to make sure because I'm sure I don't see that might be wrong. I don't know. We've opened the public comment portion, but the individuals that were here the last meeting, the reason we. Push this was to to have you here and I don't think they made it today. Uh, will were they notified.

They at the last meeting, we did announce when it was tabled that, uh, we would continue the public hearing to today. Uh, I don't know outside of that if they were re, notified.

Perfect and then my last question, obviously, I think commissioner Martinez was. Uh, alluding to that as as more and more properties are being built, uh, purchase and built, um, you know. I, and I think commissioner is kind of same is is.

is there a is there a a desire to have homeowner input in the pit absolutely uh right now when we let out a contract we take bids just like running a city you go take three bids and you get the lowest bid and you negotiate it and and you sign a contract and they we did that when we initiated the pit so we had the first year under our belt of contract completion and There weren't any change orders. There was nothing. It was all, everybody kept their word and did what they said they were going to do. The only thing that wasn't anticipated was the lack of water and the drought. And so then we had no choice but to keep the grass alive and keep everything going. So that's what we did. But in terms of future input, I think at some point in time when we, probably when we do page two, there'll be enough people where you incorporate the people from the lot owners, create a board, for lack of a better word, have them come in and verify the transparency of everything and make sure everything that they feel good about, that they're getting the best bang for the dollar, bang for the buck.

Perfect. Thank you so much. And again, thank you for your patience. Yes, sir.

Your protest is the public hearing.

Did I say that already? Oh, this is a public hearing. If there's anyone here who would like to speak to it, speak on this item, please feel free to take the stand.

I moved to close public hearing.

Second, I've got a first from Commissioner. Got a second from Commissioner to close the public hearing all those in favor. Any opposed motion carries. Second.

I move to approve second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Cardenas and second from Commissioner Villarreal. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

I'd like to abstain on this vote.

Me too, because I feel like I missed out from the last meeting. So there's like a little missing element for me.

Will we wait for Commissioner Macias then? Or is it 3-2 and we're done?

It will be 3-2 absent and 2 abstain.

Passes three, two.

No, I would wait for Commissioner Macias.

I can go find her or do we just take the next item and come back?

Hold it for a minute then.

Yeah, we can hold it for a minute and go to the next item. Thank you.

We'll jump into the items for individual consideration number one. It is a consideration and action to grant employees an additional paid holiday and or a personal day based on the results of the employee time off preference survey for the fiscal year 2026-2027. Turn it over to Scott. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Commissioners. It's a pleasure to be here in front of you today. My name is Gerardo Villarreal. I'm the Assistant Director for Organizational Development and Human Resources. as part of our ongoing effort to be an employer of choice, but most importantly, to listen to our valuable employees who serve our city every day, our departments that went to or go ask employees directly what kind of paid time off they would value most. This actually started with a question we heard directly from one of our employees or multiple of our employees as we, you know, we like to, you know, get word from our employees of how, you know, we can better improve. It actually started while widening the city observed the June 19th holiday, which is June 19th. So we felt it was important to hear from a wider workforce. So we set out a survey and I'd like to walk you through what the responses were from that survey. So we put out a survey, and we had a total of 419 employees respond to our survey, which is about 47% of our non-civil service employees. So it was multiple choices. We asked for a Juneteenth holiday, a holiday of encharro days, and a personal day off, which in our employee handbook is also referred to as a floating holiday. So like I mentioned, the three options, the Juneteenth, that's going to be, so it's pretty much a fixed holiday that we're going to be observing for the year. Chattel days as well, which would be the Friday on chattel days. And then also the additional personal day that we considered in that survey. From that survey 62% of employees mentioned that they would rather have a personal day floating holiday and 23 responses were from the June 19 holiday and then the 15% of employees responded that they would like the travel days. Uh, festival, I would like to note that on charter days is kind of difficult and kind of keep in mind where departments that work on the, on the charter days. So some of them might not really take the advantage of that holiday because they're still ongoing services that the city does provide during the charter days. So, uh, one of the council to take that into consideration.

I have a quick question.

Yes.

It says that the personal day will carry over. So like, let's say we're getting close to the to the end of the fiscal year and you have 20% of your employees who have not taken the day. How do you how do you figure that out?

so on the personal day so they um they choose throughout the year how they will be using that personal day and uh pretty much that doesn't roll over so it has to be used within the fiscal year so um that's no i understand that part i'm just saying if you have a big

group of employees who have not chosen their day or used it, and we're getting close to October, how do you... Oh, so I actually have that data, so I'm going to go into the next slide.

Sorry, I didn't get to hear you. Sorry about that, Krishna. Yeah. So personal day utilization. So this is actually your question. So 90.2% of employees have already actually used their personal day available to them. 9.8% of the remaining employees haven't been able to use it. And again, we're close to already at the end of the fiscal year. come september so more than likely they would probably potentially be using it or you know it's really up to them how they how they schedule their personal day but yeah ninety percent of utilization on the personal days so what were to happen if um charlotte's right everybody decides to use it just is there a limit or no That's going to be really much depending on the department, on the personal day of the floating holiday. It really depends on the department director, department managers, on how they exercise a discretion for how their employees take the personal day. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Commissioner, we would assign enough people to make sure they work, and so they would be assigned to work, and they get double pay. That's the way that works.

So this, real quick, so this next slide is really taking into consideration the costs of what it costs to add additional personal day and what it currently costs the city on average using a holiday. But I want the council to keep this in mind. This is not an additional cost because it's already embedded on the position budget. So it's not like we're adding 2,088 hours. It's 2,080 hours at the end of the day. additional cost mr stephen uh said it was a it was an opportunity cost yeah so of employees so so uh currently we have the two personal holidays so city's looking at four hundred and two thousand dollars and then adding that additional holidays about two hundred and one thousand again this is uh uh already embedded into the personnel uh budget uh so we add the three holidays six hundred and four thousand then what the additional holiday is 141 000 so i want to make it clear why it's a little bit lower um you know it's just there's some certain schedules uh schedulings that some employees um um really there's 40 hours work week is already embedded into that uh into that scheduling so i don't know that makes slide so considerations for approval so the personal day as employees requested and you know which offers a flexibility and reflects the employee voice of what they chose on the survey and then the holiday the juneteenth the holiday schedule which is what we heard frequently of the additional holiday for your consideration now i any questions sorry so we're approving one of the three options right It can be one of the, yeah.

The commission will entertain it. With the survey, I'd like to respect the employee's response, and I'll move to approve a personal date.

I second.

Got a 1st from commissioner Martinez and a 2nd from commissioner kindness to approve a personal day. All those in favor. Any opposed motion carries.

I just want to make a quick comment. Um. I want to thank commissioner Martinez because, uh, when I was sitting with commissioner and commissioner on the budget, he just said, hey, do me 1 favor. Can you please try to get them channel days off? And they work really hard and we just brought it up and people are like, wait, wait, wait, wait, the channel days. It's not a good, but yeah, may we take that are respected? May we take this a different day? And so just want to thank Commissioner Martinez for the creativity. It ended up being with an extra day that the majority chose to have a personal day. So thank you. Thank you.

And I want to thank the commission for respecting our employees. You know, we talk about people first, you know, and so you all show us that that matters to you. So, uh, as the as the as the leader of the team, I really appreciate you listening. We listen to them and you listen to them. And that's leadership. Thank you so much.

Well, Mayor Pro Tem and Commission, can we just confirm when this would be effective? October, I would guess.

Is that for the new fiscal year? We do the new days in October. So it's budget year. So it would be effective October 1st. Use it or lose it by December? No, you have from October to next September 30th.

From October 1st, 2026 to... Because first summer day expires the two days.

Well, yeah, I can expire on calendar year or fiscal year. Alan Deer. Okay, so this would take effect January 1st and and go through December 31st. Okay. Okay. Would you like to be part of the motion? We would just do it as we already do administratively. No change.

Thank you.

Right.

Just make sure you leave out the city attorney.

Gracias, Gerardo. Gracias. Thank you. So that can we bring back?

Yes, if we can go back to the public hearing number 13 to get a consideration on ordinance number 2026 dash 1818.

Before we take this up since we can go back to the Madera one. Oh, okay.

That's why we're going to exclude you from the holiday.

so mayor cowan is absent and we're still not close but we had a first i believe from commissioner so we had a first second from yeah we're missing one vote to approve yeah so commissioner messias you're in the hot seat you're in the hot seat commissioner messias yay or nay yay perfect thank you thank you and then we had to abstain just that's an exciting project and it

the individuals that live there will have the accessibility to the walking trails and they want the greenery. I want greenery for them too. And it just improves their quality of life with the accessibilities that they have there. So for that reason, I vote yay. Perfect. And also with the condition, I know you mentioned that depending on some years, it may be lower. The cost may be lower. Yes. Okay.

We're going to have, uh an extra 90 lots so that's going to be split between now 200 and something or 280 lots after that so yeah i think it's important for us to understand as well i mean since we're on the topic uh this is 140 lots out of how many total lots is it going to be in the whole project your 30-year 2500 2500. i don't think you're going to try to throw anything away for an extra

No $100 per lot right now, so no, I'm sure you're doing the right thing. Thank you.

Perfect motion to carry will move on to the individual consideration. Number two is consideration in action to award a managed print services contract to Documentation Inc for the provisions, installation, maintenance and support of a managed print solution for a term of 63 months in amount not to exceed $247,619 annually and a total contract amount not to exceed 1,300,000 as budgeted. Turn it over to staff.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Commissioner, James McCoy, IT Director. The item before you is for citywide managed print services. Modernizing the infrastructure, enhancing security, and driving financial efficiencies is the goal of this. The strategic value in management services is the financial efficiency we're going to generate. $329,616 is the estimated annual savings by implementing this. We'll modernize our fleet of multifunction copiers and printers. Deploying 40 new devices throughout the departments and uncompromised security we're going to introduce paper cut so it allows staff to release the print job they just won't be sitting on the printers and the other part of that is when we retire that printer will remove the hard drive and get a certification of destruction. The catalyst for change basically the fragmented versus unified approach right now we're pretty much using a fragmented we have four different vendors and 229 different devices throughout the city departments. We have approximately $46,000 in monthly ending cost just the maintenance of these aging machines and the and the ongoing support of them. A lot of the endpoints are unmanaged. These are older devices that have been in our fleet for years, so we need to modernize them so we can enhance security. Inconsistent SLAs and frequent downtime, obviously the older devices, we're running into issues with those. So the centralized management we're going to have one vendor that vendor would be documentation managing a right size fleet of 40 devices, instead of the 229 that we have. we're predicting $18,631 that's going to be the flat fee for those 40 devices across all city departments. We'll have secure badge authentication to release those print jobs. Again, it'll be secure. They won't be there, so nobody can walk up and grab them. And then proactive monitoring. The company will have SLAs making sure all those printers are up and operational for us. Deploying the next generation. As I said, there's going to be 40 multifunction devices throughout the departments. The paper cut management system, allowing us to manage those. And documentation of partnership. Zero administration burden on my staff, the IT staff going out there and having to fix those printers. That'll fall on the vendor. And delivering an immediate ROI. $329,000 is the estimated annual savings. We're going to cut that from $750,000 down to $420,000. That's where we're going to get those savings from. You'll see there $100,000 cash buyout. That's to buy out the existing contracts we have with other vendors. So we just have one vendor that we're going to have to deal with. And as I mentioned before, the certified drive destruction. And the recommendation from the IT staff, the department recommends approval for the managed print service contract to modernize our infrastructure, secure our data, and lock in a long-term operational savings.

Thank you, James. This is a 63-month contract, you said, right? Yes.

But there's no renewal options? It's just the term itself? Renewal option after the 63 months.

I'm just asking because usually these agreements have like a renewal option when we can renew.

Yeah. At this time, there's not a renewal option in this agreement. It's kind of a long agreement. It's five years. We looked at doing a 36 month, but to get the value out of the contract, that's why we went to 63 months.

Thank you. Mm-hmm.

move to approve second i have a first from commissioner martinez and a second from commissioner villarreal to approve all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you six to zero mayor procham i just wanted to point out that i challenged all of the departments to find ways that we could save money and this was a home run and so i really appreciate it's leadership in this effort streamlining something and making it much better and cheaper and just as efficient. So thank you, IT, and thank you, Jorge, James, and your team.

Thank you. Thank you. Now we will move on to the board appointments. Is the consideration in action on the approval of the resolution number 2026-117 to appoint or reappoint members to the Youth Advisory Board? Turn it over to this side.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Commissioners. The updated resolution and bylaws for the Youth Advisory Board now allows for a 20-member board. 14 of which are students to be appointed by our city commission, no more than two members representing the same school. Each member of the city commission may be able to appoint two members, one which is a primary member and the other which is an alternate member. And we recommend that the primary be a senior and the alternate be a junior. The remaining six will be appointed by the youth advisory board members when it's established. We did provide a board appointment guide We want to share that there was over 70 applications. So this is great. There's a lot of interest and it shows it's a testament, right, of what the board has done, the support from our mayor, commission, commissioner Villarreal, Esther Gard, the rest of the team. And so we're really excited about that. I do want to make a note that five are returning youth advisory board members that are now seniors. And they did confirm that they're interested in continuing. And so we'd like to ask the formalization of the commission, each commissioner to appoint those members, and then we can continue with the rest.

Okay. I'd like to appoint Miss Emiliano Marin Meta.

Second.

Um, all those in favor.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

That was better commissioner.

I would like to appoint, uh, Emmanuel Vera jr. Second.

All those in favor.

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Move to appoint Catherine Meyers. Second.

All those in favor? Can I just hear the voice? I couldn't hear the name.

Catherine Meyers.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We each get two, right?

Yes, a primary and an alternate. We're doing primary. We do respectfully recommend that to start with those five seniors that are returning youth advisory board members.

And then as well as the. I nominate Vida Diaz. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

I would like to appoint David Escamilla, Harmony School of Innovation.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Do I have to pick a senior? Or can I do two juniors?

Can you follow the yellow list, please?

Oh. It's just recommended, but you can select a junior. But it is the recommendation to continue the succession for the seniors to teach the juniors.

I want to point Ariana Carrasa from Idea Riverview. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Who's missing from the yellow ones?

Which one was your first one?

Natalie Galvan. My first one was the first one on the list.

Okay, Massimo.

I will... That's what they asked us to do.

Yes, so we are missing Natalie Galvan.

Yes, I'd like to appoint Natalie Galvan, please. Second. Thank you.

An alternate.

And it's possible to have those five as a primaries? As a primary?

We have a first and a second.

Yes, we can do that.

Did I get a vote on this? Oh, we got it. Thank you, guys.

No, I think she hasn't done the I's.

Not a legal one.

The alternate? Yes. I was a second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. Great. No, no.

I would like to nominate Alexandra C. Garcia from James James Space High School. Second.

All those in favor?

Aye. Great district.

I would like to nominate May Villarreal from Hanna. Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carried.

I have a quick question. Are you keeping tabs on the schools?

Yes. So we have so veterans already have representation. There's already two students there. And what I see is we have one from Pace, one from Hannah. One from Harmony, an idea.

I didn't want to. Oh, one from San Diego to from Harmony. I'm going to vote for someone in Lopez, Aldo Castro. Second. Aldo Castro. Aldo. Aldo. Second. Aldo's in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

I'm going to nominate Luis Solesi, St. Joseph Academy.

Second. Aldo's in favor.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed?

And we haven't commissioned Martinez. Move to appoint Madison Cabrera from Lopez. Second.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries.

So, Commissioner Villanueva, I know you were involved with this. Is there a possibility for next year that we can have an opportunity to speak to him? So we...

Yes. I would have loved to. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's... I'm sure they're all great. No, no. By the way, Mr. Gard. Thank you and congratulations. The fact that there's 70 applicants, I don't think we ever thought when we opened the application pool.

That's not on me. That's on the kids. They're the ones who said, you ought to do your nomination process this way. And we said, okay.

This is incredible.

Yeah.

It is.

It's incredible. They're great kids and they know they're helping run the city now.

And they're ready. The first meeting will be September 19th.

Did every commissioner up here nominate two people? Yes, except for the mayor. Then we'll bring it back.

We'll bring it back for the mayor.

Everybody up here, we got our two. Primary and alternate.

Thank you all. That gives us 12. We'll have two more from the mayor. That'll be 14. And then the 14 are going to nominate six from this list.

Yes. And they can review which schools are not represented yet. Exactly.

So they'll take all that into account.

Yes.

Perfect. And they have the ability to expand it, correct? Like, should a school not be represented and they want every school, they can move it up to whatever, 24 members. Thank you.

Thank you, Marina. You said their first meeting is September which day?

We're hoping to schedule for September 19th, so we do have the next city commission meeting for the mayor's appointments and any additional questions.

i mean for a board like this is there any way that you all can speak to the mayor off the record see what he's thinking so you all can let the students know and they have time because that's going to be a couple of days right oh no i'll add it to my meeting with him on monday thank you thank you and we did bring it at this time frame because it's aligned with their academic calendar we appreciate it thank you

Okay, then that will move us to executive session.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Martinez to go into executive session. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries and we're in executive session.

Okay, so we will convene into the executive session pursuant to the closed session pursuant to the Texas Government Code Section 551.071 related to Project Ascend. Number two is pursuant to the Texas Government Code Section 551.071 related to the collective bargaining agreement with Brownsville Police Officers Association Charter 290577-1. The time is 9.37 p.m. The City Commission is in executive session. We will return. Mayor Proton, may we reconvene into open session? Yes, please.

The time is 10.01 p.m.

The City Commission is reconvening to open session. Are there any possible action as discussed in executive session starting with number one related to Project Ascend?

Yes, I'll make a motion to proceed as discussed.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries.

6 to 0. And there's a possible action related to the bargaining agreement with Brownsville Police Officer Association.

No action.

I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Second.

I've got a first from Commissioner Villarreal and a second from Commissioner Macias. All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you all.

We're adjourned at 10.02 p.m. Have a good night.